the files Hi guys, I'm working on two projects that include 3D printing and I'm running into some problems. The models that I uploaded onto shapeways are with the cheapest option way to expensive. The tutorials on making the models cheaper (wall thickness and open models) appear to have no effect. How do I get my products cheaper to produce? size? different shape? I hope you guys can help me, the files are in the attachments.
What material are you thinking of? What do you consider expensive? Your models are, by Shapeways standards, huge. Most of the SW materials charge by volume (wsf = 1.4 USD per cm3), so the best way to get cheaper models is reduce the volume.
Unfortunately this sounds about right - if we take the "spherical cow" approach, "Ralph" is a simple hollow cylinder with radius 14 and height 28, which at 1mm wall thickness translates to a bit over 240 cm^3, or around $340. A potential solution is to replace at least some of the solid surfaces with a mesh-like structure - or simply make them smaller, as volume (and hence price) goes with the third power.
The Ralph has a volume of 234cm3 so 234 * 1.4 = 327 USD . Plus the handling fee of 1.5 gives a total of 328.50 USD, so that is correct. The vaas has problems: the 'cups' that you have cut the bottoms off and then stacked are not manifold. That is to say they are not watertight shells (in the sense of closed in volumes). The bottom edges of each needs to be added except for the bottom one where it is the inner face of thebottom that is missing. When SW's system encounters such models it tries to fix them and does not always get it as you might wish. In this case it has probably closed the holes and solidified the whole thing, giving a high volume and hence high price. Even if you fix it, it will be expensive. And if it is a vase, when printed in wsf it will not be watertight (in the holding a liquid sense) unless you post-process it