"... we've only been able to successfully print this model 100% of the time"

So I've been spending a lot of time reassigning all my products that were set to FD by default to the newly-named "White Acrylic". All of these products have printed successfully in the past, but I recently got a slew of reject notices that included the following (for this particular model: https://shpws.me/HyYt):

"Despite our best efforts we've only been able to successfully print this model 100% of the time." (emphasis mine)

Further in the message it reads:

"The model is too poorly supported. Overhanging or cantilevered features will collapse or break in post-processing or shipping."

I've gone back through every single one of the published guidelines and nowhere can I find anything about this need (and for the record, these models meet every one of the criteria as published in the Materials section). I don't even know what this "properly supported" concept is supposed to look like! Has anyone out there had this issue and found a workaround? And why isn't 100% good enough for Shapeways?

Thanks,
jav98

I would imagine that's a typo, either into the database or the email.

"For Acrylic Plastic, the minimum unsupported wall is determined by our ability to successfully clean your product once it has been removed from the printer. Walls that are too thin will break when the semi-solid support material is removed from the product with a waterjet blaster."

"For Acrylic Plastic, the minimum unsupported wire is determined by our ability to successfully clean your product once it has been removed from the printer. Wires that are too thin will break when the semi-solid support material is removed from the product with a waterjet blaster."

It's plausible that the parts passed through cleaning but were still too delicate for packaging and shipping.

Printing history (the 100 percent figure) was for the discontinued frosted detail, and the white detail acrylics may use different support material (and removal process for it) ? Waterjet does not sound familiar from FUD (heat and solvents for wax removal) and may send your spaceships flying.

Great. So, in essence, a developer can follow the design limitations to the letter, but still be rejected because the technician cleaning the parts thinks it's too hard? Can we get more arbitrary and capricious? Now I have an upset customer and no clear guidelines on how to resolve the problem that caused his six orders to be rejected. I guess I just have to restrict all my small products to FUD and FXD, even though the price increases will invariably cost me sales.

Slightly off-topic. Regardless of what the "minimum wire rules" say.....
If you have a 20 pound weight on either end of a 0.6mm FUD wire.. it's going to break.

Models must be designed so that you take into consideration the "moment arm", or how much weight is on the far end of the wire if you hold it by one end only.

But, there's also this... This is caused as much by the designer leaving small parts sticking out as by the plastic bags they use to ship the models in:

Okay, yes, creating a ridiculous monstrosity would be a problem, but citing the extremes isn't helpful. We all know that it's possible to follow the rules to such a ludicrous extent that it makes them meaningless.

My models are generally arranged that they should ship just fine, as there aren't thousands of tiny wires poking out everywhere. What I'm unhappy about is that now there is an undefined and arbitrary standard being applied that might cause some models to be rejected and others not to be, depending on who is doing the manual checks. Other than wrapping the models in a massive cage of sprue, which would be costly and could potentially render the model useless for its intended purpose, I have no way of knowing what I can do to make these guaranteed to print. Shapeways needs to give us some better guidelines than the ones currently out there, especially since we've already lost many hours and many sales to the elimination of FD in favor of AP.

If my models actually broke during cleaning, I'd like it if the technician could send me some pics of that so I can figure out what went wrong. Right now, I'm left to pure and simple guess work, and my customers shouldn't have to suffer for the lack of guidance from Shapeways Towers. And if my models *haven't* broken and the tech just thought they *might*... that's also a problem, because it shows that HQ and the plant floor aren't on the same page.

@javelin98 best contact service for clarification. I really suspect they did not foresee this when they decided that "white detail" would be a good enough substitute for them to discontinue FD
@stonysmith your broken silo thingy seems to be mostly an example of the cr*p packaging that shapeways-NY has been accused of lately.

In the interest of full disclosure, that is not one of my models, but rather it is one of my friend Walter Smith.. his shop is here