I have been working on a project to make phone cases. Its nothing new, as there are PLENTY of iPhone cases out there! The phone case I was working on is for the HTC 8X, and I had planned many others like the 920 and 820 from Nokia. These are MUCH more complex shapes then the flat iPhone, and not as popular. I was also planning on selling them, and even had quite a few sales on the first few days of it being available! The problem is, I got my "final" case back from Shapeways, and the quality was bad. To top it off, this shipment was to replace a previous shipment they had already messed up!!!!
There are two problems. First was the surface quality on a black acrylic case I printed. It was very wavy and lots deep lines through it. Very poor surface quality for something rated "high" for smoothness. The second was it seems they left the WSF case in the polisher WAY WAY too long. I have had polished items from both Shapeways and competitive service and never really lost a lot of detail. The detail loss was almost total! Simply put, I could not sell this to customers.
Take a look at this video showing the problems in detail.
https://youtu.be/XK1-4giUwIQ
Am I being too picky? I have seem good prints from other people, and on my own stuff (like the ring), but to have two bad prints like this in a row? If I sell products through Shapeways, I cant QC stuff before it goes too the customer, so I need to trust them, and right now after two failed prints, I cant. Anyone else having problems with the quality?