The present bane of my existence at Shapeways is polishing survivability. I'd like to get a simple answer to a simple question with regards to polishing SF plastics from a real Shapeways representative who knows the process. The question arises because very often a polished color design ships with 100% success rates and the same design in polished WSF fails consistently. It could be dumb luck or just normal statistical variance. Is the polishing procedure exactly the same for pWSF as it is for dyed SF plastics? From experience it seems as though the polishing for plain WSF must be more intense either in vibration power, vibration time, or both. If this is so why couldn't there there be two polishing options for plain WSF, one equivalent to what is used with parts to be dyed and another, the high intensity nuclear powered option that seems to be used right now for pWSF? The material pages do not note any specifics with regards to polishing technique differences. I've asked this question before and people seem to recall past statements that there are differences, but nothing that can be pointed to directly in online documentation.
This is about as official as you will get here: https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&&th= 20357&goto=95803#msg_95803 Don't hold your breath for official answers, for the Materials pages to be updated in a timely manner, for a log of changes etc,
Thanks for that piece of information. That explains the discrepancies in yields, I guess. I'll assume the 2014 info is still valid. A two tiered polishing for WSF such as p1WSF and p2WSF might make some sense although it's a bigger hassle for SW to track through ordering and production. The obvious fix is to not offer pWSF, just WSF for the sensitive designs, although it's hard to determine sensitivities unless you first order in pWSF as a shake out test. And there's still the question as to whether polishing for the dyed colors will work if you only offer WSF. It's a real pain in the patooty. Here's one of the problematic types of designs. Had to use long sprues to keep the grouping prices low and beefing up the sprues/connection loops and adding reinforcing rings to lessen fatigue turns a product that is almost cost competitive with commercial parts into one that is less competitive by about a dollar. And competitive here is a rather loose term since I'm trying to make plastic competitive with plated brass commercial products that look a bit more professional on the end product. On the other hand having replaceable hangers: advantage DRAW. This whole effort was primarily an exercise to see if it was at all possible to develop something that was close to being cost competitive with mass produced commercial parts. Close but not quite there. It's likely this type of 3D print product could benefit from the differentiation provided by ShapeJS type customization.
BTW, the upper left hand corner original hanger set was produced just fine with red dyed SF and polished alumide (metallic plastic), but not the polished WSF. That's why I keep thinking that the polished WSF polishing action is much, much stronger and intense than other polishing. Can the difference be quantified so we can have a better concept of the stress levels? The failure e-mails seems to indicate that pWSF polishing can last for hours. Is there any way to gauge the lower intensities for other polishing, pehaps by time? Are the other polishing steps perhaps closer to an hour or fractions of an hour? Or is it variable depending on what the results the operator sees at the time? I think I will activate the Bat Signal to attempt to get some official feedback. @MitchellJetten