Print Orientation?

Has anything at all been done to allow print orientation? Where are we on the subject?

Still no official word on it either way but there have been a few comments that, depending on your perspective, might mean Shapeways is seriously looking into it but it's still hard to say with any certainty.

They added a selector for orientation for Porcelain. I'd take that as a sign of things to come.

But... Porcelain is dealt with in-house, and some of the other materials are printed thru 3rd party vendors.
It's not only a matter of adding a selector within the website, they have to get the vendors to develop their own processes to adhere to the selected orientation.

...wasn´t there was a poll on december?

... seems, a lot of designers would appreciate definition of z-axis.
Even, if it would cost some bucks more.

" everybody" knows, sometimes You can´t afford to play lottery " ...will it be placed / produced in optimal position"?

My sample,- as example: ( old story)

Made 3 parts connected, so the customer get 1 part produced with most accurate axis....
The other 2 parts are wasted!

http://shpws.me/CnGe

Great question, there is also a long discussion about it here but hopefully we can give something more up to date soon

Would be interesting to see how customer service, protocols, go hand in hand with print orientation. I believe there are a lot of steps to handling a design/product correctly. Print Orientation is just a part of that, one step.

Would be interesting to see how customer service, protocols, go hand in hand with print orientation. I believe there are a lot of steps to handling a design/product correctly. Print Orientation is just a part of that, one step.

@Andrewsimonthomas

I do not want to ingratiate myself...
...but the Shapeways staff doing great work!
Shapeways opened the door to 3D printing!

There is a hughe difference to all the competitors.

I could list 20 advantages... too lazy actually...

1.) Quick upload & fast calculation of pricing
2.) Acceptable model preview & nice renders of different materials.
3.) Very good automatic pre check of printability / analysis of weak areas.
4.) Very good customer support ( in my case? )
5.) "thousands" of different materials
6.) Understandable datasheets / examples about different materials and production technologies
7.) Strong & easy to use Shop system....
8.) Powerful, well frequented & helpful Forum...
... AND: Always looking on new possibilities ( Rubber material, intersecting material designs, Aluminium, ...etc...)

There must be some people on Shapeways... they make the difference!

Long story short:
I´m pretty sure... there will be an option sometime for orientation of the models.. ;-)

@Andrewsimonthomas

I do not want to ingratiate myself...
...but the Shapeways staff doing great work!
Shapeways opened the door to 3D printing!

There is a hughe difference to all the competitors.

I could list 20 advantages... too lazy actually...

1.) Quick upload & fast calculation of pricing
2.) Acceptable model preview & nice renders of different materials.
3.) Very good automatic pre check of printability / analysis of weak areas.
4.) Very good customer support ( in my case? )
5.) "thousands" of different materials
6.) Understandable datasheets / examples about different materials and production technologies
7.) Strong & easy to use Shop system....
8.) Powerful, well frequented & helpful Forum...
... AND: Always looking on new possibilities ( Rubber material, intersecting material designs, Aluminium, ...etc...)

There must be some people on Shapeways... they make the difference!

Long story short:
I´m pretty sure... there will be an option sometime for orientation of the models.. ;-)

Would be interesting to see how customer service, protocols, go hand in hand with print orientation. I believe there are a lot of steps to handling a design/product correctly. Print Orientation is just a part of that, one step.

@Andrewsimonthomas

Thanks for the link!

I do not want to ingratiate myself...
...but the Shapeways staff doing great work!
Shapeways opened the door to 3D printing!

There is a hughe difference to all the competitors.

I could list 20 advantages... too lazy actually...

1.) Quick upload & fast calculation of pricing
2.) Acceptable model preview & nice renders of different materials.
3.) Very good automatic pre check of printability / analysis of weak areas.
4.) Very good customer support ( in my case? )
5.) "thousands" of different materials
6.) Understandable datasheets / examples about different materials and production technologies
7.) Strong & easy to use Shop system....
8.) Powerful, well frequented & helpful Forum...
... AND: Always looking on new possibilities ( Rubber material, intersecting material designs, Aluminium, ...etc...)

There must be some people on Shapeways... they make the difference!

Long story short:
I´m pretty sure... there will be an option sometime for orientation of the models.. ;-)

Would be interesting to see how customer service, protocols, go hand in hand with print orientation. I believe there are a lot of steps to handling a design/product correctly. Print Orientation is just a part of that, one step.

Hi

My name is Hunter - I'm in the Product Team at Shapeways and am taking a swipe at the big hairy beast that is Orientation.

Let me share with you how I see the challenge and the first few steps we plan to take in the next couple of months. If you have a minute or two once you're done reading any thoughts you have on how it will impact you and others in our Community would be helpful and appreciated.

Here is the premise I'm starting with - We promise our Community that we will enable you to build Shops on the Shapeways platform where you can share your designs with the world and possibly make a buck or two. We hope that you will print your designs before setting them for sale and will iterate until you are satisfied with what you have created.

As you iterate you are entitled to expect that the only thing that will change is your design and not have to control for other variables which we influence without your input.

Once you have completed that process you as a Shop Owner are entitled to expect that the parts which your customers receive when they place an order in your Shop will look and feel and function the way you designed them to each and every time.

Because we do not guarantee consistent orientation you are not guaranteed consistency during iteration or in the in the products your Customers buy from your Shop.

That sucks.

So the first thing I would like to shoot for is consistency. And the first material I would like to aim to provide that in is the one we make the most of - the Strong & Flexible clan.

The idea is to promise the following - once we have printed a part in a certain orientation - we will always print it in that orientation going forward.

Right off the bat there is an exception to this and I want to be open about it rather than hiding it in fine print: We will not be able to guarantee consistent orientation for large parts (as currently defined in our XSF sizing rules). If you are interested please let me know and I'll be happy to go into the reasons behind that. It may be something we can improve in the future.

That is the first step.

We will continue to make the first call on orientation - so when a file is uploaded to Shapeways and printed in Strong & Flexible for the first time we will decide how to orient it. The reason for this is that our Engineers consider strength, stepping and other key factors when setting orientation and have a lot of experience in doing that so we believe that for the vast majority of parts the orientation they set will be the best possible solution.

However, if you have printed a part and feel that another orientation would be better we will offer you the opportunity to request a different orientation going forward - meaning that the next time you or one of your Customers orders a part we will print it in the orientation you request and will continue to do so going forward until you ask us to do otherwise.

That is the second step.

Where we go from there will largely be determined by how well the process I just described goes.

And a lot of that will depend on feedback from you. I'm looking forward to having that conversation.

So - if you're still reading this - Thank you.

Hunter

Would it be possible to have some form of program for more experienced designers that would essentially allow them to skip to step 2? I mean, the idea of orientation is not that difficult to grasp, and many of us I'm sure can look at a print and know exactly which side was facing up or down simply by looking at it. In particular for something model kit with many parts sprued together being able to dictate an orientation up front would be invaluable because I could arrange the parts and sprues in such a way as to minimize/remove the possibility of having "faulty" prints due to issues with print lines/polishing issues.

Would I also be correct to assume that step 1 would include some visual representation of the chosen orientation that the designers would be able to view fromt the 'My Models' page or something similar?

Add this statement to the materials pages, "Your model will be printed with the orientation it was uploaded in. However, for a reduced cost of n% we will select the print orientation." Add a check box somewhere for selecting the orientation cost reduction.

Problem solved.

@CybranKNight

For your first suggestion:

'Would it be possible to have some form of program for more experienced designers that would essentially allow them to skip to step 2?'

We hadn't considered that but I think it would be worth looking into how we might do that - to start with we'll need to define how we establish what proves that you are an experienced designer in a way that is easy for us to check quickly.

For your question about Step 1:

We will most likely show a visual representation of the orientation we select in the tool where you will be able to go to request a different orientation for future builds.

@UniverseBecoming

Thanks for the suggestion The challenge here is that a lot of designers are not familiar with the impact of orientation and/or would rather not have to worry about that when uploading models. We believe it is our responsibility to take care of as many of the pesky challenges involved in printing the designs uploaded to Shapeways as possible. The solution I outlined above is more about providing choice to Designers who want it and consistency to all our users without asking for any extra work on their part.

True, that is something that might be difficult to reliably figure out without some measure of trust going back and forth. One option might be to look at it in a similar view as Print it Anyways, an opt-in program or something that would allow for you guys to track a designer's knowledge of orientation until you can "graduate" them or something.

Another thing that I thought of over the weekend, will you be developing guidelines for the print engineers to follow when deciding orientation? Before it was, if I understand it correctly, almost entirely up to the packing algorithm to decide orientation outside of some manual optimization after the fact but even that was not purely for orientation. But now if you're planning on going through and manually picking a specific orientation prior to the tray packing I'd expect there to be some consistent methodology to that decision process and that it would also be explained somewhere public like the material page for example.

Regardless of any potential skepticism or criticism I'm glad you guys are working on this and sharing it with us at this stage!

As customer of Shapeways, it is not my job to tell Shapeways how to run your business. It is probably in Shapeways best interest to figure it out - how to improve their business model. Print Orientation would help, although I feel it is still a small step. At least the hope is it will take this process of manufacturing with Shapeways in the right direction. Right now, "That sucks" is not a good business model. But, I hope Shapeways moves in the right direction.

So, I have to have Shapeways position my model, then print it, then tell Shapeways how I want it printed again, THEN PAY AGAIN to have it printed the way I wanted printed in the first place?

No. I won't buy that.

Might I remind Shapeways that by going down this road Shapeways is setting itself up for a product liability lawsuit? This based on the following statement in the terms:

PLEASE NOTE THAT, UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED IN THE DESCRIPTION FOR A SPECIFIC METERIAL, THE MATERIALS WE USE FOR MANUFACTURING THE 3D MODELS MAKE THE 3D MODELS SUITABLE ONLY FOR DECORATIVE PURPOSES AND THEY ARE NOT SUITED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE.

If I design something that is not a decoration and Shapeways makes adjustments to it to increase its strength and the item fails and someone dies, isn't Shapeways out on a limb in this situation? The plaintiff could say, "Your Honor, Shapeways said in their forum, "The reason for this is that our Engineers consider strength, stepping and other key factors when setting orientation and have a lot of experience in doing that so we believe that for the vast majority of parts the orientation they set will be the best possible solution." Consequently, I trusted their engineers to provide an orientation that provided enough strength."

Buy the way, material, highlighted in red, is misspelled.