Here are three versions of the same ship (sort of...)
Top to bottom: PLA (gray - printed by me) and two Shapeways prints - Frosted Ultra Detail (in clear) and High Definition Acrylate:
Top view. The "deck planking" in the FUD (clear) are printer artifacts:
Side view (the clear ship is hard to photograph next to the black one):
PLA detail. This was printed with a 0.4mm dia. head (400 microns):
FUD detail. The sawtooth pattern is courtesy of the printer. The printer resolution is 29 microns:
HDA detail. The pips along the bottom and on the sides are leftover sprue attachment points from the printing process. Even though the layers are 50 microns thick, the surface smoothness and details are far better than the FUD. It's also cheaper. The hawsepipe printed in HDA, but didn't print in FUD or PLA (see first photo):
I bought some fittings and PE from Battlefleet Models and I'll finish the HDA first. The FUD version will require a lot of sanding and primer to hide the printing artifacts. I'm pleased with the PLA model - it came out OK, considering that the smallest details are 5-14x smaller than what 's capable of printing.