Higher quality materials and better finishes

Shapeways should up their game to suit industrial designer type customers?
I find most of the materials like strong and white to be a too low quality and finish is marginal.
Wouldn't more options attract more customers?


From 3DSystems
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Will you pay the premium price for higher quality products? There are other print services out there offering better finishes...at a cost of 10x what Shapeways charges.

This is not to say I don't want to see Shapeways offer better materials and finishes, but my guess to why they don't offer them yet.

The materials are probably not that different in cost per cubic cm.
The printers probably are more expensive but I suspect if the quality was available
At a competitive price people would go for it if the job required it.
Why wouldn't they if already spending big $$$ with the high end
printing services.
Make high quality available to the masses I say.

I like the sound of the new SLS printer, but I heard say it cost $0.5m

I wonder how much better it really is. Or can the existing machines work with the same, finer, powder and just change increment settings.

I suspect that the material cost is not a significant factor here, but it would take longer to produce models at the higher resolution.

They could do a kick starter to get a super expensive machine and then offer HQ printing at a
Low cost in repayment to the kickstart contributors. Shape ways could make a fortune as all
the current customers would want to have their current designs printed with the better machine.