Can the turn-around time be improved?

Seems like after placing the order online, it should be in the mail within 48 hours. Why does it take several weeks?
[Edit: Changed title]

Why would it seem like it should be in the mail in 48 hours? Even WSF takes a day to print the build volume and a day to cool, followed by "unpacking" the parts, cleaning, sorting, and packaging. I think they're doing a very nice job at 6 business days, thank you very much. (Oh, and if it's to be polished and dyed, that's extra.) If they have some breakage, they may elect to try a reprint instead of rejecting the model out of hand. It's a printing service, yes, but it's never going to be Kinko's quick.

How do you get 6 business days? I would settle for that (although even that seems long by modern standards). Out of my 11 orders, the fastest turn around was 10 days from order to shipped (13 delivered). Thanks for the comment about taking a day to print and another cool - I didn't realize that. I figured the manufacturing would complete within a day. Not trying to be negative - I am thrilled Shapeways exists. Just a little frustrating trying to prototype with a 2 week iteration cycle.

Six business days is their own claim, and is only a stated goal, not a guarantee. That being said, I think all of my orders have shipped ahead of the estimated ship date. (I reside, and receive, in western Canada and have had every order arrive the next day after receiving the shipping notice.)

I have worked in the plastics industry previously. If you think 6 business days is slow, you need to investigate having an injection mold made, tested, and put into production. The industry standard mould base, into which the cavity will be machined, is a stock, on-the-shelf item and will take about a week to arrive after ordering. That's the quickest part of the process.

Now consider that 3D printing permits the manufacture of items that are not otherwise manufacturable as a monolithic (unassembled) piece. As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That Shapeways can deliver my parts in anything less than six months is pretty damned magical, let alone six days.

Which material(s) are we talking about anyway ? Some require more than one production step, and some are made at production partners, so production
times vary by material (and are listed on the "Materials" pages). You will also have received an "estimated shipping date" for your orders based on
the typical times for the "slowest" material in each order (and any known backlog, as stated on the "Status" page under the "Materials" tab) - how far
off from that estimate were the actual delivery times ? (My orders usually arrive on time or 1-2 days early)
Also keep in mind that a key point of shapeways' business model is that you are one of many customers who share their printers (and the time humans need for checking your model for printability, cleaning the raw models as they come out of the printer, etc). If you have not yet done so, watch the video linked under "How it works" on the bottom of the webpages, or some of the other production videos in shapeways' youtube channel to get an idea of the processes involved.
If you really need quick turnaround, you can probably find some 3d prototyping businesses in your area where you can get both an engineer and an expensive 3d printer dedicated to your project alone - at a price considerably different from what you pay here.

Most of my orders are WSF although I do occasionally get black tint. Thanks for the information - what I am trying to find out is if this turn-around is just temporary due to this industry still being in it's infancy or if there are real bottle-necks. If the latter, I may buy a personal printer for quick-turn stuff. However, if it's just a matter of bringing in an industrial designer, and things will pick up then I will hold on the purchase of a printer (which will be obsolete in a year anyway ).

Also, I should correct my earlier statement of 10 days fastest turn - I was looking at the wrong column (target ship date). It looks like I did see one order shipped in as few as 4 business days - most are 5-6. I will revise my title to be less inflammatory.

You can get prototypes in any of the common materials overnight via numerous service providers, however, you're going to pay outrageous fees, not to mention outrageous overnight shipping charges.

Shapeways is getting there. What I'd like to see is drastically lowered lead times so we can actually sell products from our shops. Currently, lead times plus shipping time is way longer than what consumers expect for items ordered from within their respective countries. What Shapeways needs to do is get shipping time plus lead times down to less than five business days, which corresponds to seven actual days.

My main interest is sterling silver. With shipping, it takes a whole month for customers to get their orders from Shapeways. That's wayyyyy too long. It doesn't work.

I can get my sterling silver designs overnight from other 3D printing service providers, so I know it's possible.

The strange thing is, Shapeways and companies like Shapeways could be making profits into the stratosphere if they would work to make their services similar to what consumers expect. In fact, competition doesn't even really matter cuz the marketplace is so huge!