I recently placed an order for a tool I created and wanted printed in Brass. I selected Raw Brass thinking that this would be unpolished. I even read the material page that said, under Look and Feel, I would have to polish the raw brass. I missed the part at the bottom under the heading of How It's Printed that says it is briefly tumbled. When I received my order I found it to be polished so much that small details that were important now had round instead of sharp corners. I am making detailed model parts not jewelery. It would be very helpful to me if you would offer a completely UNPOLISHED brass option even if it had some plaster remaining on it that I had to clean off. Thanks for considering this.
Yes, I have emailed service and the response was they would pass my request along to the development and materials team. I posted it in the forum to put the issue to a wider audience. As it stands now I cannot recommend your raw brass material to any of my fellow 3D modelers because it is subject to an uncontrolled amount of time in the tumbler. Totally unpolished brass would be a reliable print medium and would retain the detail level of the original drawing. It seems to me with all the non-jewelery modelers using Shapeways this could be a significant market. Definitely a bigger market if it way marketed as a lost wax brass casting process up front instead of buried in the fine print at the bottom of the materials page.
Totally understandable. I was asking about pictures so that those of us who have used the material can say whether what you received is normal or not. And I asked if you had emailed service so they could check to be sure that it wasn't accidentally polished. I loooooove raw brass, and haven't seen detail loss from the tumbler.
I have attached a scan of the raw brass tool approximately 12mm x 40mm. It is a jig for bending wire. Notice the raised parts no longer have the sharp edges as designed. Front and back are shown. It works for bending wire but because of the rounded edges it deters me from printing more intricate parts.
Early on in the introduction phase I had a brass pen body made that I ordered "raw" but came polished to some extent. As I recall it had happened to several people and they offered replacements. I kept what I had because it was still ok for my needs but I was under the impression that in the future they would maybe cut/polish the sprue point but leave the rest alone except for minor cleaning. What is the official process flow supposed to be for future reference? I can see how the production people would like to ship parts that are as pretty as possible but that doesn't mean the customer always wants pretty.
Here's a piece from my last order, you can clearly see the print lines. I rounded everything except the letters IT on the zipper puller. It kinda looks like it may have rounded, I'll look at my print when I get home to compare. You can also see the seem between the teeth immediately after the zipper smoothed. This is most likely where a sprue was removed. What is the size of the pieces that rounded?
The material sheet for raw brass says that it will print down to 0.6mm wall width. If it can print to that resolution I expect it to print with sharp edges similar to FUD. The jig that I showed in the image has parts that thin. They were rounded by polishing. Basically what I am asking for is a material on which I can control the amount of polish. Send it to me unpolished and I will polish as needed. This seems to me to be a simple request. I would even pay the same price and Shapeways could save money by not doing the tumbling. I am not asking to change the current material selections but to please add an unpolished selection.