Very Dissappointed.

I just received my recent shipment of designs and I am angry to say the least.

I was extremely happy with my first item Anchor of Resilience.

But both of these are much below standard compared to my previous order, though they are same material and relatively same size.

You can see in this image they look as if they are completely two different materials, With the winged piece there are aspects of it which are larger than the fish, but yet the piece is much rougher and looks like it has been painted a metal colour.



The second item you can see a large marring or defect on the side of the fish on a flat surface not located by near edges. Additionally there is a discolouration and texture difference as if someone put a grinding disc to the one tail, while the tail to the other fish looks completely normal.

I understand the roughness on the fish, or the texture, but not how they would leave protruding slag on the model like that.

There is also grounded marks on the top of the winged piece



The inconsistency and flaws are pretty upsetting, and this is after receiving a customer complaint that when attempting to order one of the pendants that shipping would be 20USD$ for them inside the US and they live only 20 miles away.

I hope there is something which is done to resolve these things as I am pretty upset and puts a real damper on my work if my pieces are going to go out with flaws like this.

I have made many items in stainless steel, and they all have a slightly different color. The reason for this is (I am assuming) because of the infusion of bronze. Sometimes more bronze shows up in the final piece causing it to have a more yellow color.

The marring and grounded marks are likely from either one of these or a combination of them:

Polishing in the vibratory tumbler will tend to polish flat areas much better than areas that are harder to reach.

There is always some part of a stainless steel piece that has been connected to a sprue for the bronze to be infused. That part has to be cut off, and will leave a mark on the final piece. SW mentions this in the material's description page.

If you don't want these things to happen, I'd avoid stainless steel for pieces this small. Different designs are effected differently.

Your anchor design was flatter and more likely to not show some of these issues.

One reason I have been doing more in silver is because it doesn't have a lot of these problems. Of course it is much more expensive.

To be brutal, neither design lends itself to being polished without a good deal of skilled hand work.

Well, I won't get into a technical argument as I lack the technical knowledge or experience.

However common sense would tell me when you have a piece, similar in size, proportion and build style it would at least be relatively close in finish, not look like an utterly completely different material.

As with the fish, the fish are symmetrical, and there are two of them. it isn't a portion of the model with complex curve, or tiny definition, it is a relatively large surface of area to the rest of the piece. Additionally it didn't have any problems with the other 3 identical sides, why would there be slag on this portion?

If there is going to be slag on such a large surface area I would expect slagged junks like this in more complex areas with finer detail and difficulty, or areas where removing unwanted material would be more difficult.

Also if you would like to add a sprue to the piece for infusion, why would you choose a prominent and highly visible side or portion of the piece rather than the bottom or some where it is much less visible. The hoop clearly indicates the bottom, and if you are going to use the hoop for connecting the sprue on one, why not use the hoop for the sprue on the other rather than randomly attaching it to a main portion of the piece, where it will be in constant sight to the wearer and everyone else viewing it.

I am sorry about your disappointment at the inconsistency of the pieces, but I must say I really like the winged pendant.

thank you turtles, I do to I just wish it matched anywhere near same type of material as the other pieces printed.

Hi Perefim,

I agree with you about the choice to put the sprue for the fusion in a better "hide" position, e.g. on the vertical side. I'm a jewelry designer and this is the first rule, also because the sprue position have to improve the metal injection during the infusion and of course have to be absolutely invisible.

For the finishing I think these two pieces are small and probably a hand finishing is better than a simple vibration polishing in the tumbler.

I hope you can fix this issue, maybe using another material.

Good luck.

Dario

Thank you Dario and JoostD.

Hi Cody,
I am not trying to come off as flippant here, but as a designer, I believe it is vital to thoroughly understand any process you want to employ in producing a product. So please take the following words in that spirit.
First, you should not compare casting metal to printing metal. The entire process is radically different. The "sprue" on a cast job is an open conduit like a pipe, that allows a stream of molten metal to flow into the mold cavity. This is not the same with 3dmp parts.
On a printed job, the object is first built up from stainless steel powder which is temporarily held together by organic binders. The total volume of this part is now only 60% metal. The trick is to replace the binder with bronze so finished parts are close to 100% solid metal. The process which allows this is called infiltration and it also requires a conduit to allow the bronze to infuse the printed part. However, unlike a casting sprue, this conduit , known as a stilt performs more like a wick. The stilt is added to a model by technicians in the printing shop. The placement of the stilt is based on their experience for what works best, ease of removal, and ease of speeding along production. I'm not positive on this, but It might be possible to add you own stilts to your models before submitting files. This might solve one of your problems.

Color variations are sometimes unavoidable due to a slew of technical reasons. Print orientation can and does effect final surface topography. Barrel finishing is a high volume process and an objects shape and surface features play a major role on how the final part will look. As far as little "slag" like boogers go this can be caused by stray bits of print debri that might get knocked off another part or stilt and accidentally end up where it shouldn't be. Every effort is made to avoid this but sometimes s... just happens.

This is NOT a perfect process. But, it works most of the time and Shapeways brings this technology to a large community of users at a very reasonable cost. I dare say at a cost significantly lower than trying to find an absolute custom 3dmp service provider. Dozens of very dedicated and concerned people are spending their days trying to work out these and many other issues. Just don't give up on the process! Learn from it and add to the greater pool of knowledge. That's what progress is really about eh?

-G

Hello Glen,

I do appreciate your technical knowledge. I guess I should have been more clear about my level of knowledge. I am an engineering student, and have had a classes over manufacturing in traditional and non traditional methods. I have also had exposure to the processes, and understand the working. However not to a technical level to be debate worthy.

However i received an order today, which was without any problems like the first order out of the three. No slag, and the finish for this order of pieces was also once again similar to the first.

So 5/6 pieces have a similar finish, and the other one looks as if it may have missed a step in the processing.

5/6 of the pieces have no visible slag, however one does in a relatively wide area.

5/6 pieces have sprue placement in a logical area which is not in prominent sight.

I understand it isn't a perfect process, but I feel the flaws were ones ignored, and would be a reason a customer who buys my models directly from shape ways would likely throw a tantrum over.

I am sure the ratio of error here will be less than 5/6 and sure that may be great for 3d printing, but it is still nearly 20% of your customer base which could never buy a product from you again due to errors like these.

Yes I agree with everyone to an extent, with all the very valid points, defending shape ways. However it is important that I hear from shape ways directly in what happened to the models, how to prevent defects in quality by possible alterations to the model, or if simply mistakes could, possibly have been made or something been overlooked in

processing of my 2nd order which hasn't occurred in the other 3.

The best thing to do when you get an order and don't feel satisfied with it, is to contact customer support via e-mail.

I am not saying that this is what you were doing, but sometimes people complain here thinking that they will pressure SW to take care of the problem. When in reality, they don't have time to check all these posts on a regular basis.

It is much faster to send SW photos and explain what you think is wrong. I have never had them argue against any of my complaints, and are great with customer service.

Lincoln
www.craftosterone.com

No need to pressure CS, they will make it right if you email them. I do like when people bring up issues so that others can say, yea I have that issue on my piece too. That way shapeways can adjust processes that produce unacceptable results, and/or know when a piece shouldn't go out.

Think a misconception is developing that is frustrating. But I made this post, I didn't know a complaint could be made or there is a portal for this.

I have looked through the website and I still cannot find it. I would like to prefer to avoid people thinking I am doing this out of malice. But from the portions of the site I am familiar with this is the only place I have seen customers get feed back.

I have even asked my support questions on the forums cause website navigation is confusing compared to support portals for other sites. I know I open myself to "that guy is an idiot" but without knowing cannot find or even know if there are ways to create support tickets. So I post the only way I know where I can communicate, and seemed like others have done before.

This isn't an attempt to make shape ways look bad, its just my best and not well working way I know how to reach a solution at the time I created this post.

Perefim,

My apologies, I didn't want to sound like that is what you were doing. That was more for future readers to see. The best way is to email support@shapeways.com when there is a quality issue. They are tremendous with solving issues. And if you do have a problem again in the future, please share it on the forum. And also share CS response.

No worries, I just want to avoid anyone having the idea this is some sorta smash campaign on Shapeways, I think the technology is terrific and they provide a very valuable service which enables people like myself thing which I may not otherwise.

Just doing the best with what I know to express concerns and make sure I don't have to worry about whats going out to customers, its a learning process.

Hey Perefim, has CS managed to help you resolve things?

Hello Ana,

I haven't heard from CS via email or anything to my knowledge. Not sure if I have over looked but checked my emails etc.

If they have attempted to contact me it hasn't reached me.

cheers,

Cody