FUD funky texture

I received my first FUD prints yesterday. I painted one up and took some photos. I'm really confused as to why some surfaces printed nice and smooth, and other surfaces modeled in precisely the same manner (sometimes a variation of the same part) printed looking like sponge. See photo.

See the last section of this

] https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=getfile&id=10 222&]

The texture is on both sides of the area, and surfaces that are in the same plane but on different configurations aren't affected, so your explanation doesn't hold water.

Well support material doesn't have to be on the same plane, If the box car were oriented on its side, it would need support material on the inside putting support material on both sides of one wall. I actually talked to a production facility about a prototype and the reason that one side has support residue, is that normally they would basically sand blast it, but that would take out fine details as well, so to preserve the detail they have to leave residue from the support material.

I understand the problem of support material residue, but no amount of scraping or scrubbing, or soaking in solvents removes this texture. This is not a residue problem, this is a base material resolution problem when a thin wall is built up vertically with support material on both sides. I have reoriented this model, but there is no possible way to completely avoid this type of feature.

When I printed things with this material's predecessor through a different company, they allowed build orientation to be specified by the customer so you could at least predict or model to negate it's effects.

I don't know anything about your build tray layout process, but please consider giving us the option for build orientation! Or at least some insight into what determines build orientation so we can reorient the model.

I'm wondering if this strange surface isn't to some extent a printer calibration issue. I had identical parts printed with this texture and some were almost free of it.

I think, while shapeways have been struggling to fulfill orders for the frosted materials, it is likely that every cubic centimeter of the machines' build envelope has been pressed into service. It may very well be that, when more machines are in service and the volume of orders reduces to what passes for normal, the operators may have more discretion about orienting the pieces to get the best quality prints.

I have asked Nancy the specific question;
here, "Is the wax support material printed at half the resolution of FUD (i.e. the same resolution as FD)", she is in the process of finding out. (here)

The half resoultion wax mixed with full resolution acrylic would explain the sponge like texture.