Thank you! ^___^
I don't have a 3D printer in-house yet... I do however, have one on order and it's scheduled to arrive in march. The thought of having an SLA 3D printer is pretty awesome. ^____^
There's a couple of different types of 3D prints out there. Primary ones are SLA (which believe it or not dates back to the 80s!), SLS, and FDM. SLA is Stereolithography, and uses lasers and UV lights to build up the print out of a 'bed' of specially formulated liquid resin. SLS is Selective Laser Sintering, similar to SLA. Instead of having a bed of resin, it's a bed of powdered material (typically nylon, but it can be other stuff like glass, ceramic, metal...), and lasers are used to fuse the powder together into a solid form. FDM, fusible deposit material, think of it like a hot-glue gun on crack, it shoots out a small stream of ABS plastic to create the print. All of these, the print will come out in the base color of the material used for print.
Not as commonly known, Z-Corp. The machines made by this company have the unique ability to add color to the print, literally *printing* the object in the intended color. Typically the print-bed of this machine will have gypsum powder as it's print material. It's very similar to SLS, except it doesn't use lasers. Instead it has a print-head (very similar to a normal ink-jet printer) that infuses the gypsum with a liquid binding agent. To get a color print, normal printer ink cartridges are inserted into the machine.
In terms of detail quality in prints, best to worst are: SLA, SLS, Z-Corp, and FDM.
If you do the whole 3D modeling thing, and want to try and get one of your models printed, I'd suggest going through
http://www.shapeways.com/.
Alice is made of Nylon. Eventually molds will be made off her, and she will end up in resin.
<3
-Kiki-chan78.