Shapeways Decline

Am I the only one who has been noticing an extreme decline in all Shapeways services? From stuff like changing the pricing system of cheap materials to worse customer service.

We all know how they changed the pricing system for Strong and Flexible matertials last year and how they tried to make it as a positive thing even if many designers had their models increase price. Maybe there were more models that reduced its price than the ones that increased its price, but the price increase overall was MUCH bigger than the price reduction.

But thats ok, I can perfectly understand why they did that, even if they tried to make it as something good.

Now they have Frosted Extreme Detail, which should never have been a new (and more expensive) material, it should have been an improvement on Frosted Ultra Detail. There is almost no difference. Ive tried both on the same small model, and the detail and printing lines that were in one there were in the other one. The only improvement there was is that if feels stronger. They just made it a new material to be able to charge more and to have an excuse to take away the problematic Frosted Detail.

More and more, they are increasing the prices of cheap materials or taking them down. And creating more expensive new materials. There is no price reduction of any kind.

For same reason, lately, they seem to have gone worse with the "handling" of products. My clients recieve more broken models than ever before. Even very old models that were fine a year ago. But not only that, they have also increased the number of times I get a rejection in a model. And for very odd reasons, reasons that wouldnt have been an issue before. Ive had more rejections this last month that I did in my entire first year as a seller. They REALLY should change the system for rejected models. They should let the designer have a 12hour window to fix the model and keep it in the same order without having to inform the customer. And if the price of the model increases it should come from the designer's income.

The last month of Frosted Detail I recieved pictures from customers of models that looked like they were mauled by a dog. Something went wrong with the printing process and they let it slide because they just wanted to get rid of that material. That is a terrible policy to follow.

I also get more delays than ever before on my orders or my client's orders. And Shapeways style of leting you know the order is getting delayed is flat out terrible. If the order is scheduled to be shipped on a tuesday, a minute before its wednesday they send you an email leting you know that the order is going to be delayed. Really? At that point I can guess it by myself.

Their customer service has also declined. My customers tell me about Shapeways not accepting responsability for broken models and things like that. Even I have felt that the customer service is more robotic and less personal than before. A while back an email from their customer service felt like a personal guide to your problem, now they feel like copy/paste emails that they send to hundreds of customers.

The issue with FXD is that it takes significantly more machine time to process a model. These machines require a significant amount of electricity to operate, and therefore, more machine time means more cost. I too would wish to see the prices drop some, but I can see that FXD would necessitate being more expensive.

I also wish for the ability to "pause" an order for a short duration so that we can repair models, but as you mention, it brings a very sticky problem with it... If a designer can upload "any" model as a repair, there's nothing stopping a designer from doubling the size of the model, thereby costing Shapeways 8x the amount of material - someone must pay for the difference in material. This could become a severe problem in the precious metals. There are (too many) cases where the designer has had no sales yet, or the markup on a model is so small that it won't cover the difference in price.

I can't really speak to current customer service issues.. I've had almost no rejections in quite a while now.

Somewhat unrelated, since as I understand it stainless steel printing is done by a partner, not Shapeways itself, but the polishing on my steel prints has REALLY been mediocre lately. Gold Steel models in particular have had this weird grey diffusion throughout. Stainless steel in general used to have a really nice polish, but not so much anymore.

Just a question: is Shapeways doing quality control on third party production or should failures be more actively reported for third party productions in order for Shapeways to notice and act on decreasing quality (if it ever happens).

Shapeways is doing quality control on all parts that we ship, so nothing should be going out broken. If it breaks in shipping or looks like something wasn't caught in QA, you can reach out to Service@shapeways.com and we'll help you out.

Shapeways is doing quality control on all parts that we ship, so nothing should be going out broken. If it breaks in shipping or looks like something wasn't caught in QA, you can reach out to Service@shapeways.com and we'll help you out.

What about for things during production? I know you guys catch things during the production process and get things re-printed but it seems as though you guys don't properly catalogue WHY things were caught and re-printed. Case in point on my last order I noticed 2 of my new designs got bumped back to 'Processing" so I emailed support explaining how I noticed that they were being reprinted and asking how they had failed and instead I was simply told that there was an issue and they were being reprinted, information I had already figured out for myself leaving my actual question unanswered, after re-asking I was told "I am afraid I can't tell you exactly what part wasn't intact or where the models broke during the process", which as a design is frustrating because I want designs that print well, it's better for me because it's more reliable for customers and its better for Shapeways because every re-print you guys have to do is lost profit on your end but if you guys can't tell me where the potential issue(s) are all I can do is cross my fingers and hope that, over time, it doesn't happen again!

It's even arguably unfair given the way "First to Try" works. Personally I'd rather fix a design and re-order it a second time than have it sit in my ship still labelled as "First to Try" potentially dissuading customers from purchasing it and not knowing WHY it only has a 50% Success rate.

Thx Andrew, for the quick reply. I was just curious about the supply chain. I will receive my first full precious metal prints tomorrow. I am very excited. Now back on topic.

HA! That's a good one. I must get broken stuff almost every other order. Granted you've been doing better since the October train wreck, but still, things that are very obviously broken are still shipped (or forced into tight packaging, and smashed by the tape machine (someone really ought to check the tension on that thing, I can't say how many boxes I've received that have been crumpled by the tape being pulled too tight)). At least you're good at getting the reprints done, although it does take a while and is a major inconvenience, when the broken Items are for soon-to-be-late Etsy orders.

I also completely agree with what CybranKNight is saying about the lack of communication between the production team and support staff. At one point (back around October, obviously) I was told that only 1 of 30 attempts to print my models was a success, but was never told what exactly was causing the failures. Shapeways' whole thing is "Iterative Design", but it's very hard to do, if when you ask what went wrong on a failed print, the response is more or less "I don't know, I wasn't there", or worse, aren't even told if a print failed and is being reprinted. If there was a way for the production team to write even just a few words as to what broke or went wrong, that would be a huge help in the long run (and not just on rejected models, as is the current way).

Yes, I'm in the US and this happens on orders I place to fulfill Etsy orders. I place two or three a week and the boxes are quite often crushed by the tape. I've seen the auto taping machine in videos shapeways has uploaded, so I assume that's whats doing it. The box is crumpled, but the tape is pulled taught, so It's not from UPS, (although they've done their fair share of box smashing aswell).

Hello wonderful Shapeways Community. My name is Jack and I currently work in Operations at Shapeways here in New York. I started at Shapeways working in the factory, and eventually became team lead for Finishing Processes- polishing and dyeing. Currently I work on projects aimed at improving quality of parts and reducing reprints, both with lead time and customer satisfaction heavily in mind.

I want to address this discussion on our current Quality Assurance safeguards in place. After a part is printed, it undergoes an amazing and transformative process from a bed of powder to a beautiful model in your hand. We have a team of dedicated and extremely hard working individuals working night and day to help clean, sort and finish thousands of unique models daily. Everyone here marvels at all the amazing things our designers make everyday.

After the entire print tray of models are cleaned we help locate your individual part or parts, and send them along our process, either into a bag to be shipped to you, or towards the finishing room to get a polish or color. After finishing, they are sorted again and placed in bags to be shipped.

Sometimes, models break. Or we have complex machine issues that effect surface quality. We are proud of neither, but we learn from our mistakes.
At both sorting process steps, we are all on the lookout for any quality concerns. If a part is even suspected of not being perfect, it is set aside and reviewed by a second individual. The quality defect is then logged in our database under one of our 34 Quality defect reasons. These include "Broken in Cleaning, Broken in Polishing, Laser Overlap Line, Wrong Color, Stepping Due to Bad Orientation, Weak laser power....etc.) We log these defects with each model, so we can track quality trends associated with the model, to see how we can prevent the defect at each process step in the future on an individual level.

Once reviewed, the part is either reprinted, sent to our customer service team to contactyou directly or sent along to Distribution.

Part of my job is to define all of our quality defects and perform analysis on WHY they happen so we can correct them. Every single day I am tracking these defects. For example, as I type this we are experimenting with different polishing equipment and methods to produce far less breakages while delivering the same quality of polish.

At our end of day meetings, I personally go over customer complaints with our entire SLS team. It really pains us when a broken model slips through our system. It is embarrassing when it is dyed the wrong color, or any other process caused issue, and no doubt very frustrating as a consumer, a customer, an artist or designer. Please trust me that we are learning so much here everyday, and have made huge leaps in the past year as far as production. For example, In winter/spring 2015 we had Printer issues that induced brittle parts that we have since nearly eradicated. Action was taken and now we have preventative measures in place.

Feedback is an important part of this process. Understanding what happened to your model to cause a rejection, a broken part, a late part, anything our of the ordinary, is a huge concern for us here.

The gap in correspondence is something we want to improve, and we are working everyday to find solutions for this. Shapeways is doing things no other company even tries to do, and along the way we need to help each other out. I support transparency at all levels and I hopped this helped at all.

Thanks!

Jack Samels - Operations

Jack.. I'm not sure that those 34 failure reasons are being shown to the shopowners.

Hey Stonysmith, here are the quality defects that we are looking out for on a daily basis.

Jack, the problem is that any issues a model has are only delivered to the design when Shapeways deems an item to be unprintable.

Something I think would be very helpful to both Shapeways and us Designers regarding our designs.

I don't know if any such system is in place already, but there should be a manner for items to be tagged/flagged if it's both the first time it's being orders AND if it's the designer placing the order so that, if there are any issues with the printing/post-processing the Designer is contacted in short order to allow them to improve the design which, as I stated before, is of benefit to everyone involved!

Jack.. I understand the list, but what I meant was that the "event" is not getting back the shopowner.

Let's say that I had a model "Lost in Cleaning"... as a shopowner, I am never made aware of that event. At best, shopowners end up with "Your item can't be printed", and not much more than that.

I personally would like to be MUCH more involved in the process.. [I know that certain people might not believe me, but ] I have no desire to force models thru that are problematic to print.

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All of the items in your list are found in post-production.

Unrelated to post-production issues, there are a number of us that are asking for a short delay (a few hours) between when the Checkers decide that some model can't be printed and before the buyer is told that their order has been cancelled. We would like a bit of time to try to correct a model before the customer's order is cancelled. I fully recognize that there are issues with the topic, but we need to work together to try to get something in place.

Hi, I was wondering if that daily meeting happens in the Eindhoven factory too, as I've been having recurring issues in the last few weeks with the colours of my pieces (Dye Pigment Spots, Print Powder Contamination, Uneven Coloring). I'd feel less frustrated if I knew that each time I complained the feedback was being discussed by the team at a strategic level with plans to improve the process, rather than simply a refund being issued. (I must add, the customer service itself is great and the team super friendly and helpful, and I appreciate the refunds and professional treatment - it's just frustrating to be making a complaint with every other order at the moment).

The daily meetings happen in both factories. Every time you let CS know about an issue and they give that number that starts CT-#### thats how we track quality issues over the long term and make adjustments to our processes to improve.

Ok - cheers Andrew!

My pleasure!

Since the issues that this thread was initially created for seem to be addressed I'm going to lock it up.