Changes to Frosted Detail Plastic on April 15th

We're constantly looking for ways to improve our material offerings to be more enabling, better and faster for you. I wanted to give you a heads up about upcoming changes in our materials that may affect some of your designs and/or products you are selling in your Shapeways Shop.

On April 15th we are:
- Introducing Frosted Extreme Detail (FXD), with a higher resolution than Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD)
- Retiring Frosted Detail (FD); FUD will remain unchanged
- Renaming the Detail Plastics materials Acrylic Plastics

What does this mean for you?
If you would like to order a design in FD, please do so by April 14th to ensure your FD order goes through, as the transition will happen on April 15th. As noted on our Material Status page, we have added 4 days to our expected production time for FD in anticipation of high demand.

Designs that you've printed in FD will not go away, and can be ordered in either Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD) or FXD. We are updating success rate metrics so successful FD prints from the past will count towards FUD and FXD.

If you have a Shapeways Shop, customers will no longer be able to order your designs in FD after the transition. Products previously available only in FD will no longer be for sale unless you enable another material like FUD or FXD (when it becomes available.) If you have multiple products, the Pricing CSV Wizard makes it easy to update materials and pricing in bulk.

Where you currently see Detail Plastic material names, you and your customers will see the Acrylic Plastic names. White Detail becomes White Acrylic, Black Detail becomes Black Acrylic and Transparent Detail becomes Transparent Acrylic.

Why are we doing this?
Frosted Extreme Detail has a higher resolution than Frosted Ultra Detail, decreasing the layer height from 29 to 16 microns (the shorter the layer, the higher the resolution). While more expensive to produce, thinner layers means unprecedented detail and surface finish, sharper edges, less stepping, and stronger models. It's perfect for the most demanding miniatures, figurines, and molds and masters for casting.

Frosted Detail is a fragile material that often breaks during 3D printing, requiring reprints that make the process costly and slow. Because it is printed enclosed in support material that is difficult to completely clean, it's also hard to give you the quality you deserve. Unfortunately, after trying hard to improve the process, we've decided to stop production and focus on better alternatives for you.

Finally, we are renaming Detail Plastic to help reinforce that it is stronger but less detailed than our Frosted Detail Plastic.


I realize material changes can be painful, but I'm really excited about the new FXD offering and can't wait to see what you create with this high-quality, high-resolution material. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, or you can always contact service@shapeways.com.

Raphael
Shapeways Materials Product Manager

I'm interested in knowing what this will do to pricing, although I am very glad to hear about FXD being introduced.

Is pricing info posted anywhere yet?

Thanks,

Steve Hunter

Shouldn't these types of announcements be going to the top of the forum in the "Official Announcements" section?

Taken a look at the current pricing and the prices for FUD are 1,33 higher then FD.

Recently I changed a lot of my smaller parts to FD since it was said to be more stable in production.

1) Seems that I oncemore have to change the materials for a lot of items.

2) Will there be any pricing change for FUD. I would expect that material price is dropped to FD so that we can hold the pricing of our items.

Woody64

In response to the "Official Announcements" question:
Yes sir! We are working on a bug that will not let us move, but it will be there soon.

Thanks!

FXD is a welcome option. Every FD part I ever got was junk, so I'm glad to see it go. My only concern is that even printed at a 16-micron Z-resolution, if the model is not oriented effectively, the print will still be sub-standard. With no way to indicate which surface of the model should have priority, quality is still a roll of the dice.

Hey Woody64,

FUD pricing won't be changing. We understand that setting prices and enabling products can be quite some work. Using the CSV Wizard can make this a lot easier: https://www.shapeways.com/shop/pricing-csv

Best,
Raphael

Hey Hunter,

We're still in the process of finalizing pricing for FXD, and will announce it when we launch the material on the 15th.

Best,
Raphael

We just finished the photo shoot for the new FXD material earlier today, and I wanted to give you all a preview of the amazing quality we're seeing in sample parts.

FUD on the left, FXD on the right. Model is 1:48 Vanity by Pretty Small Things

Honestly it's not a proper comparison unless the circumstances match in regards to both items but in the provided pictures it appears to me that they were printed in different orientations.

So those of us with larger models that are impossibly expensive in FUD are screwed? In my case, that will eliminate the S and O scale markets due to insane costs. While the bulk of my market is HO and N, this isn't right.

I welcome the new material for my small stuff, but feel some accommodation should be made for the loss of the material.

Steve

Im sorry to say... they pretty much look the same. This feels like you are using a slight upgrade of Frosted Ultra Detail to get rid of a material that gave you troubles.

Also, at the same time, instead of just upgrading FUD and keeping the pricing, you create a new material to charge more.

Dont get me wrong, its great you develop newer and more detailed materials, but you never reduce prices you just make new things that are more expensive.

There's the term"business continuity" which is very important ---

That was heavily affected for a lot of designers by the change of price calculation for WSF.

If prices are not changed all of us having worked in FD will face +40% increase in costs, correct?
Once more a threat for some of us ...

Woody64

if the FUD will stay same price - in regard to FXD if i assume right
the price will be too high for most to buy - as is on fud spending lots of time
for little to no return on work ... i will try to print a model in FXD just to compare
to the one i already have and see how small detail can get .
but local 3d printing Hubs are catting up with quality - and pricing
for sure want to see the detail on the new material.

Raphael, for two years I've been hearing that customer-specified orientation was being considered. Is it ever going to happen? When FUD is done right, it's great. FXD done right would be even better. But when it's only occasionally done right, then it's frustrating and expensive. Again, good riddance to FD. I've never seen an FD print that was worth the money to print it.

I'm wondering why do you take away FD ? I think you should offer the three frosted variants. Material options stability should be a priority for you.
If I'm not mistaken, one of 3DSystems main feature for this printer line is to be able to print parts in the three resolutions in the same print tray.

Hi,

more interesting than the quality is the price of FXD. For my scale 1/87 models FUD is sometimes too expensive to sell. I fear that FXD will exceed the prices of FUD and will be uninteresting for larger parts than a Euro coin.

Bye, Guido

Hello,

Since we focus on N scale modeling the FXD material is welcomed. But what about print orientation? As shown above the print orientation is a big flaw in the SW printing process. Also the cleaning process of SW is far from optimal. Sometimes everything is covered in goop. Cleaning FD and FUD is a big hassle.

Please consider these items, because they are more dominant to the print quality then just smaller layers. Unless you like yellow brittle plastic parts, you need to paint these kits.

I assume the vast majority of our products will remain printable in FUD only. Since only a limited number of our kits can be ordered in FD, this is not a big issue for us. FXD could maybe become something for more detailed miniature designs. But there are a few questions that needs answers:

What are the design guidelines for FXD? Can the print orientation be fixed? Will FXD be delivered cleaned only? What is the price setting?

What is the real benefit of FXD at SW. Can this be explained?

Since the dollar is becoming quite expensive a lower proce setting for FUD would be very much appreciated.

Cheers,
Maurice
RAILNSCALE
http://railnscale.com/

FUD price is already high, I don't think there is a lot of room for a higher priced material. We'll see. Maybe if you drop FUD price to the FD level, and put the new material at the FUD price...
I think the idea behind this change is to raise significantly the value per tray or some kind of similar metric.

Snuck THIS one in under the radar, I see!

No email to designers (a simple database search would have given you the emails of all SW designers with FD products to warn...) and no banner on the SW home page - I had to hear about it on an unrelated hobby website FFS! Amateurish. Simply amateurish.

Any idea of pricing structure for this new FXD material? Launch date is only a couple weeks away.