Hey all, Tomorrow Shapeways Live is back, and this is where you can post any of the questions you'd like me to answer on air. Materials, lead times, new developments, you name it. This has been an extremely eventful month for the community, and I'm looking forward to catching up with all of you guys. For those who may be joining for the first time, please be aware that I will not be answering specific support-related questions about individual orders, but instead focusing on the conversation and updates that effect the whole community. See you tomorrow at 2pm New York time/8pm Netherlands time! - Ana
Hi Ana; Any more info on why some parts printed in FUD have grooves or diagonal lines appearing on some surfaces? Any suggestions on how we should design our models to prevent this from happening? Examples: https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&&th=5 627&goto=30143#msg_30143 https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=5777&a mp;start=0& https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=5786&a mp;start=0& Thanks! Scott
Hi Scott, before Ana will have your question in the shapeways live meeting, i can allready answer a part of it. At the moment you can't design your model in a way that it won't happen. From what I can see it's because of the printing direction, and also because of the wax (support material) We are still looking for the answers as well -Why are some parts yellow, others not? -Why are some parts white, others not? But I hope to give you some better answers as soon as possible! Mitchell Jetten
The build size for silver (150 x 150 x 30mm) is a little restrictive on the 30mm axis. Any chance of a more uniform size? Also, would it be possible to use the same wax to metal casting process to create the same high detail in stainless steel or other metals, even gold?
Hi, I'd like to know the results of the introduction of Polished White Strong and Flexible: - was it successful? - did you have a lot of issues (parts breaging during polishing for instance)? - will Shapeways soon offer Dyed Strong and Flexible? - will the Polished option apply soon to Alumide too? Thanks.
Yes, polished WSF is my material of choice, so I'd be interested to know any issues Shapeways have with it, and where you see it going in the future.
Are you gonna add Mammoth stereolithography someday to build large objects? The build area of the largest mammoth machine is 2100x700x800 mm And it would be great if you could add a process like http://www.3ddc.eu/ does. For myself I would prefer doing everything on a 3 print at the same place.
Food Grade Options? - If I wanted to make dishes to eat out of but not use ceramic, will there soon be more options? 3D Image Filetypes? - Will Shapeways be supporting more filetypes? I use program XYZ to make my 3D files and Shapeways doesn't support it (yet) and I was wondering if they were planning to?
@RandomBlink - I think the only new format for 3D printing is AMF, see Shapeways - AMF, blog entry, practically everything else can be converted to the pretty much industry standard STL file with the right free/share-ware or plugins. As it is Shapeways offers more choice of upload format than competitors.
And AMF does allow multi-material printing. Question: is it something that Shapeways' printers could already do (mixing White Detail with Transparent Detail for instance)?
And I would like to know about the half smooth/half rough issue of FUD prints. Will Shapeways be able to get rid of that? And whether Shapeways will further consider a less brittle FUD material? The detail of FUD is good, but the brittleness caused too much damage during post-production. CGD
Also, the verification process takes much longer after uploading models nowadays. Sometimes it takes hours. Any chance speeding that up? CGD
GCD - if you were talking about yesterday, sorry, that was probably my fault. I was testing out some chain maille uploads, finding out where the limit was on number of rings vs number of triangles... and I will be doing some more in the future :twisted:
If you were also doing that for the past week, I'll forgive you if you send me one set of chainmail. CGD
I managed to miss this one as my line had gone down - is it going to be posted online at some point ?
Yep, thank you Paul! For those who watched or checked out the recording, what did you guys think of the structure? I've been trying to find the right balance of being collaborative, and keeping things organized during SW live. Interested in hearing your opinions.