SHIPPING COSTS

Dear Shapeways,

I am new to your really cool website and the world of 3D printing.
I play guitar and after finding Raphael on Shapeways was prepared to
order some customized guitar picks. Raphael suggested that I start
by ordering just 1 guitar pick to make sure the design was printed
to my satisfaction. I placed my order realizing that I had to pay
$3 for 1 guitar pick and I accepted that. BUT then I got to the shipping
which I was told, was dictated by Shapeways and I fell on the floor
when I saw the price of $5.00 DOLLARS!! For 1 tiny little guitar pick
that could easily fit in a common envelope with a little stamp.
I'm not saying that I can't afford $5 DOLLARS but I had to take a
stand on a price that was completely ridiculous. So unfortunately
I am not going to order from Shapeways. I did feel the need to
voice my concern and I thought maybe Shapeway would consider
in the future, NOT RIPPING FOLKS OFF with their shipping costs.
All the best to the folks trying to earn money on Shapeways.

Sincerely,
Bummed out guitar player

On the other hand, you can order $2,000.00 worth of items and STILL have it delivered for just $5.

Or one item worth $2000

That's the catch of flat rate shipping, at least 5$ isn't that bad all things considered, I'm in Canada so I have to pay 11.50 USD for my shipping and even that isn't as bad as it gets! ;p

New Zealand checking in... international postage is not fun.

Makes those free shipping sales even better though, so silver lining.

Some products just don't mesh well with 3D printing or associated things like the shipping. Small flat pieces of plastic are going to be particularly bad with pricing unless they are sprued together, although in the case of a guitar pick you may not want any remnant of a sprue mark after you cut it off to disconnect it from the others.

Assuming you are purchasing in some variety of strong and flexible plastic each pick will have a minimum production cost of between $1.50 and $2.50, depending on if it is polished or dyed or not. Costs related to material and designer markup make up the rest. Anyway, to purchase just one pick would cost a minimum of $6.50 with shipping which may be considered to be too expensive. If you don't mind a sprue connection and are willing to cut the sprue and possibly sand down the sprue point yourself you could ask to see if the designer is willing to sprue several picks together. Let's consider if you're purchasing 6 individual or 6 sprued picks. The 6 individual picks have a minimum cost of $1.50x6+$5.00=$14.00. If the 6 picks are sprued together the mimimum cost is $1.50+$5.00=$6.50. That's a potential difference of $7.50 which would probably save you more than the shipping costs as long as you don't overnight the shipment. And the designer could still add the same markup for each individual pick and everyone is happy. Designer gets same revenue, customer gets cheaper picks, and Shapeways spends less money on handling small individual parts.

So see if the designer is willing to do something like this. And perhaps they can come up with a method to shield the sprue point on each pick with a small shell or hollow. And perhaps that hollow could be designed to provide a better grip on the pick. It's 3D printing so think outside of the box!


*edited to correct my math...

That's all very nice, but it doesn't work because this guitar pick was with a customization on it. So there's no way to make it sprued together, because then only one pick would have the customization.

Personally I think it is ridiculous to have to come up with a "out of the box"-"silver lining"-"other great idea" for something so simple, just because shapeways is not willing to put it in an envelope. But that might just be me ...

So where do you draw the line - not every small item is flat and robust like a guitar pick. Other "similar" items would at the very least require padded envelopes of adequate size to make sure they do not arrive bent or broken. Now you have to stock M different envelopes in addition to the N sizes of box and queue them for shipping with standard postage at individual rate (per weight and/or size of envelope ?) rather than the flat rate negotiated with the relevant carrier. And who decides that "this item can always be shipped in a plain envelope" rather than the usual boxful of bubble wrap that would survive delivery by catapult or ICBM ?

The customization is an issue but that's problem for the people working on the custommaker software to eventually resolve. It is annoying that the moment the custom boxes are drawn over nothing that it reverts to an error. It would be nice to see CustomMaker not try to emboss or engrave in free space, It's related to the problem of trying to customize over the full area of an oval or circle. The best you can do in such cases is to plop a rectangle within a roundish shape, and that limits the area that can be customized.

If they did offer shipping in a flat paper or slim bubblewrap envelope they might need to charge extra insurance, or require the customer to agree to a disclaimer with regards to any shipping damage. It's up to them if they want to expand shipping options but if they do they also don't want to bring more pain to customer service because of new problems with shipping.

I always like a good challenge!





https://www.shapeways.com/product/HJPPTA8NJ/guitar-picks-sty le-0001-1-4mm-engrave-6x


I managed to shave about $4.25 off the price of 6 picks connected together as opposed to purchasing 6 individual picks. The customization process is a little more painful since because of alignment issues but at least it is possible. I'm not guaranteeing it will work all the time, or with embossing, but this method shows promise. If CustomMaker would place a temporary rectangular surface below the model, do the customization, and then delete the temporary surface you would end up with customization on only your model and you wouldn't need to pay for the extra plastic needed to accomplish this as in this example. This should work for both multiple elements and the square over circle problem to maximize the image content on round models.

You might be on to something. But like you said yourself: the alignment might be a problem. Specialy because the designer places the picture holder and not all customers might be able to figure out how to copy the 6 (in this case), let's say logo's, in one picture. Altough they always could mail the designer of course. My next thought would be: Why not make it possible to add more the one "picture holder" in the custom maker.
And like you also said: " If CustomMaker would place a temporary rectangular surface below the model, ", but that's not the case. At least not at the moment. But I see where you're going, and making this possible in the custom maker, might be a good idea.

Another problem is that the size of the template I used is 1958x189 pixels and that might limit vertical resolution. That might not be as good as plopping a 600x600 pixel image on each pick. I have suggested for having multiple image capability, possibly with some kind of step and repeat option. When or if such improvements are in the plans are a big unknown. I did provide the test image so it can be used as a template in the Instructions thread that is linked from within the product. If they can cut and paste their logo or graphics onto each of the individual images in the template, and erase anything left over from the template, they should get decent and mostly centered results. And all you need is a basic image editor like Paint.

This method is not completely thin envelope compatible either but it can help to cancel out the shipping charges as long as you purchase more than one or two picks individually. The vertical height could be reduced by using sprues directly connected to the picks but then you have post processing issues for the customer. I used the peg tabs and holes in the picks so there's an ability for the picks to go through the polishing process with increased polishing uniformity. It's also possible the picks could break off the pegs. I won't know until I order a set.

Another huge problem is that this is Shapeways. This might work now but not next week, or 2 years from now, especially since CustomMaker is still an experimental tool.


---------------
Yet another thought. If CustomMaker accepted .svg vector images as an input the pixel problems might be less of an issue.

So while we're trying to get the cost of postage per pick down by increasing the count and leaving postage cost constant...

Another strategy might be to (ab)use your customMaker echoes, assuming they prove to be real.
You'd put an array of picks in a stack inside a cage, and put a suitable square block on the front of the cage to catch the image.
Please note that I don't promise this will be reliable.

I'd personally rather use ShapeJS2, but you'll have to wait for that to come out.

Assuming the echo thing is an artifact that would be very likely to go away in the future it's probably not worth the investment in time and money. I was contemplating a cage approach but would that cause problems with polishing and dyeing? Oh what the heck, it might be worth seeing what happens!

Soooo, not to be dismissive or anything, I mean, I think you have a good idea. But the easiest solution here might still be: put it in an envelope..and to answer the question of where to draw the line: well (still just my opinion but ) wouldn't it be very easy to ad a checkmark in the ordering process for using an envelope..
( V ..yes, I understand all the risks and things like that..put it in an envelope anyway ) ...

It's not up to me! My viewpoint is that Shapeways may or may not accept such suggestions, and if they do it might take years. So I'm all about working around the system whenever I can. The same applies to any other organization or bureaucracy on the face of the planet, IMHO.