Mass multiple printing - Large volume orders

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by 135534_deleted, May 25, 2012.

  1. Hey guys

    Im curious to know if anyone has had any experience with large batch orders, and the companies they used?

    I have checked with shapeways and it doesn't really seem to be their 'cup of tea'. so i hope they don't mind me posting for information on other companies

    conversation below:


    Hello
    i have a few questions about mass prints.....

    currently the limit stands at 1,000,000 triangles i feel this really limits the detail allowed in a design.
    is it set like this because of current technology......i.e. anymore triangles and the printer/software cant process
    it?
    or is it something you guys implemented to limited general file sizes?
    if so can it be changed for an individual client?
    if so what is the max limit?
    ideally id like to take advantage of the density discount printing 100cm3 at a time. but without limiting the detail
    within my designs. is this still cost effective for you? or is shapeways more about the individual prints?
    Kind Regards

    ----------------------------------------

    Dear Piers,
    Thank you for emailing us.
    Unfortunately we do not offer bigger files or more polygons.
    As you can understand this forces our hardware to the limit if we have to fill trays with 100 models with
    polygons above the 1million (taking up to several hours to calculate the tray)
    Also, there is no exact rule for multiple models per file, but if the production facility thinks that it is too much,
    they will reject it.
    The reason for this is that by having multiple models in a set, you only pay the handling fee (startup costs
    once) but we at Shapeways still have to process all the models in the file.
    This is also the reason why we already introduced this for Silver, for this material it is not allowed to have
    multiple models per file, as customers just pay the handling fee once, and we have to "pay" the handling fee for
    all the other models in that same particular file.
    I hope this explains the situation.
    Kind regards,
    Mitchell Jetten
    Customer Service Agent