Missing parts becoming more of a problem for shapeways

I have been 3d printing with shapeways for over 3 years now. I have seen the ups and downs, the growth and expansion. I love that shapeways provides an affordable 3D printing service online that I can not find elsewhere even after several years. So it is no wonder they have grown so big it tends to hurt sometimes as they continually try and adjust for the ever growing expansion. thankfully shapeways service is usually pretty spectacular though so that has been the key to keeping things going.

I wanted to open a thread to see how others thought, felt, and reasoned with the multi shell issues that have become a bigger issue then in the past.
I create dolls that are in many parts that string together after I get the print. Some of these parts are pretty small. a year 1-3 years ago this has never been much of a problem. A missing piece was pretty rare even in bulk orders, but lately.... it seems two out of three different order items tends to have at least one missing piece.

So the question here is do you connect all your pieces together on a rod ( like a sprue for a model kit) and take the hit in the extra cost? Or do you risk pieces being missing.

I know other people recommend it, but even at shapeways lower prices the cost is a bit high the older methods of manufacture. I hate having to raise the price, I know it would deeply impact my sales even if only a few dollars added which is why I have personally not opted to do so.

I even had a shapeways service rep tell me I shouldn't have to resort to such methods when explaining my concern.

Of course it also hurts to have my products for my customers delayed. My most recent headache is that a part was missing. They originally had me upload the missing part and order a replacement for that part. which makes sense and is perfectly fine by me. this year the solution provided was to just reprint the entire file and send it. A relief and sign that shapeways really had your back and was committed to its work. This is what I thought was being done and all signs pointed it to it being as such...but rather then say anything different someone along the shapeways line decided just to print the missing parts....however they printed the wrong ones, so what I thought would be a replacement item, instead became a double whammy. (they even stuck a label on the bag and hand wrote "missing part", and had the original full item label on the other side....)

so now I am revisiting the sprue and attachment idea to hold all the pieces together. the other problem with doing that though is it would make it harder to do an even and good polish if doing any polish materials.


Anyone else have similar issues? your solutions? and opinions, feel free to post and discuss.

I know that it won't be applicable for larger items, but I've been having good luck with cages:

I've have one part in two-part FUD model with separate shells get lost, but that's all. If at all possible, I like to sprue my multiple shells together so that it makes life easier for the Shapies. If I do have separate shells, I'll only do two or three and they are all roughly the same size and big enough to handle easily.

I wonder about some of these FUD models I see with twenty or thirty tiny little pieces that aren't connected to each other-- that must really frustrate the operators.

If it were my problem I'd probably use a system of micro sprues. Sprues small enough at there attachment points to allow disconnection without causing much of a surface imperfection, yet large enough and numerous enough not to fall apart during production. Think of a conglomeration of your parts connected together by tiny short sprues. This would keep the cost down far enough so as to be insignificant.

Unfortunately the miniatures designers like Stony wouldn't be able to use this method currently, because their products are already micro miniature in a lot of cases.