Basic Nylon Plastic?

Did anyone test out this new material? How does it compare to versatile plastic? Reason Im asking is that shapeways have set every model I have available with this option and most customers are choosing it since its cheaper.

@ Hordeprime: Please... I am not complaining to you.

But I have such a time figuring out which material people ask about. You mention "versatile plastic" and, frankly, I have no idea what material that is... okay, I know it is not a metal or wax, but there are so many "plastics" listed that "might" be what you are asking about. And now you ask about "Basic Nylon Plastic"?

To try "again" to get what is left of my brain wrapped around the materials ShapeWays offer, I went to My Models and selected an item to see what plastic is the cheaper of the selections or to find "Basic Nylon Plastic".

There I see that "PA12 (SLS)[Versatile Plastic])" is the cheapest material for my model. Is that the material you are questioning? I dunno. Is that the "new material"? Or is that the material I normally print that item in? I cannot tell!

I also discovered a new (to me) option "Not sure which material to choose Shop Sample Materials".

So I clicked on it, and got a confusing page of 6 "Samples" of material... odd looking "sticks" of 3 thicknesses and a hole. I say 'confusing' because the names under each image are truncated to the width of the image with an ellipsis (three dots), showing that there is more text to follow, but there is no way to SEE the ending of the text unless you click on the item as if you are going to buy it.

And the order of the list is, ummm... I dunno what the order is! But it shows only 6 items (out of apparently 13 things the page might show according to a set of 3 option selectors on the left side of the page).

And these 6 Samples are ridiculously expensive for ONE item... if you wanted to compare various materials, you'd need to purchase a separate sample of EACH! OUCH!

Selecting to "Sort by" (Right side dropdown list) it switches from showing just the 6, to showing all 13 items. And 6 of those are gift cards and 1 is a neckless material. No matter what sort order is selected, it always switches to the list of 13 items. And if I use the selection option boxes to pick just the 6 samples, it reverts to the unknown order of just the 6 material samples.

Granted, it is pretty easy to see which is the cheapest of the 6, but it is just one more irritation in ShapeWays website. It is just one of the LOUSY web site programming problems on ShapeWays.

Back to the naming of the materials problem.

I went to the top of the page to hover the mouse arrow over the "Materials" link and get the big list of various materials... and NONE of the listed materials match any of the names under the 6 samples! And I don't see a "Basic Nylon Plastic".

Which of the items in the dropdown box is which one of the Samples?
Which one is "Black Smooth PA12 (MJF) Mate..."?
Which one is "Processed Versatile Plastic (P..."?
Which one is "Clear Ultra Fine Detail Plastic..."?
Which one is "White Natural Versatile Plastic..."?
Are any of them "Basic Nylon Plastic"?

ShapeWays just cannot seem to settle on ONE name for any ONE material. I have the same problem selecting a material in the "Tools" page to see if my design is outside of the material specifications (too thin, too big, etc.) and then finding that same material when going to order the item. Part of the problem is that for any one material, post processing can be done and the name of the post processing is SOMETIMES included in the name of the material and sometimes it is not... there is no uniform methodology to the naming that I can determine.

Sometimes I think I have it figured out, and then a new page of names appears and it obliterates what I thought I understood of it.

Sorry, Hordeprime, I don't mean to obscure any answer you might get, but I cannot find any "new" material that is cheaper that what "I THINK" I have always used for 99% of my designs. So, I don't know how to answer you.

Ummm... end of rant!

Wow that was a superlong answer without answering my question LOL. But I agree with everything you say ShapeWays is very confusingly structured with issues that have plauged the site for years. Thats why I like to keep it as simple as possible for my customers by just having 2-3 plastic materials available. But now that ShapeWays automatically added this basic nylon plastic Im really curious how it compares. If its noticeably inferior in quality to versatile processed plastic(has always been my default option) and if so imo not ok to sell to my customers and I will have to remove it as an option for over 500 models :/

To cut my verbose answer short... order your most complex item of concern and see for yourself how it compares. Without ShapeWays using uniform terms for all materials, nobody can guess how Basic Nylon Plastic compares to PA-11, PA-12, PA-?? GB, Versatile Plastic (with or without any post processing), or PlayDoh or Spam on a shingle.

Basic Plastic is probably a random plastic printed on a machine that was currently available to load more models

As I understand it now, it is not a "random plastic" but one of two very similar materials printed on one of two machines that print exclusively in one of those materials. Yes, it is sort of random as to which you will get, because, yes, it is printed on whichever machine is available to fill with product to be printed at the time the collection of orders is being combined into one print job on one machine.

Each machine does not print one ordered product at a time, but many orders for the same material are combined in a huge 3-D jigsaw puzzle to get as many into the machine as possible for one run of the machine to print them. They can even print a small item inside of a larger item if the larger item is big enough and has an opening big enough for the smaller item to easily come out (to be separated from each other). If one item is a drinking cup and another item is a multi-sided die (dice) then the die can be printed inside the cup's cavity and the two separated after the print job has completed.

ShapeWays offers a sort of discount on the price of the product if you allow them to decide which machine/material is used. If one machine is too full to add the ordered item and the other has room, they can get both machines into operation sooner if they can mix and match based on available room and not have to wait to start a print job for one more order specifying a particular material. Saves them machine down-time (waiting for a full machine print) and you get your product quicker than if you had to wait for a print job to complete before your item can be added to the next print job.

Which two materials? Because Raw versalite looks much worse than Polished Versalite on small models and there are other plastics I have no idea what after SW renamed them few times and also they use different names on same materials when you edit it at shop settings

The two "plastics" (Raw and Polished) are the same material (PA12, one of several types of nylon), but the "Polished" has (as I understand it), after the object has been printed, it is exposed to an acidic(?) chemical gas that tends to melt the plastic on edges such as to blend the ridges and valleys of the stair-stepped sides into a smooth(er) surface (and, unfortunately, smudges really fine detail). Same PA12 nylon for both, but one has been further processed (the chemical gas) after printing (regardless of how it was printed, Multi-Jet Fusion [MJF] or Selective LASER Sintering [SLS]).

I don't know if PA12 is a particular chemical composition of a generic Nylon, or if it is a particular size of powder of one Nylon material.

I have seen the powder that was not completely removed from an item I have had ShapeWays make for me (part of it was a thin rod with a deep hole in one end). It is a gritty feeling material somewhere between the size of grains of sugar that you might sprinkle on your breakfast cereal and a "Confectioner's Powdered Sugar".

I know that SLS is a vat where a thin layer of the powder is put down and heated to within a few degrees of the melting point of the plastic and then a LASER adds just enough heat to melt the plastic (Sinter) where the LASER is aimed. Once a layer is printed and has cooled back to the ambient temperature of the vat, another thin layer of powder is put down over the whole upper surface of the vat of powder and the process repeats melting each layer of the object being printed. Un-melted powder supports portions of the object that have nothing of the object under it.

I am not sure how MJF works. I surmise the powder is ejected from a nozzle and the acidic chemical gas is added where the material is to be fused together and not added where no object is to be formed (leaving just the powder as support for the next layer). The chemical evaporates quickly, leaving behind the solid Nylon of the object being printed, embedded in the unsolidified powder.

Regardless of which name ShapeWays uses for the material (today), it is just one material being processed in different ways. I just wish they would come up with a better (and MORE UNIFORM) way of identifying it for us users.

So, "Smooth Versatile Plastic" has a chance to smooth deep cavities (the chemical that does the smoothing can get into small areas) that "Processed Versatile Plastic" could not reach due to the size of the ceramic stones?

But, why the change in the name of the plastic when prepending a descriptor of the post print process? Why aren't they named, "Smooth Nylon Plastic" and "Processed Nylon Plastic"... or better yet, "Chemically Smoothed Nylon (PA-12)" and "Tumbled Nylon (PA-12)"? Or, instead of "Basic Nylon Plastic", call it "Basic Versatile PA-12"?

The use of "Versatile" and "Nylon" for the SAME plastic is misleading to those of us that are only mildly, in passing, trying to understand what the product is made of.

To some of us, the term "Plastic" is NOT the same as "Nylon". Might be wrong, but the term, "Plastic" has nothing to do with what we perceive as "Nylon".

And, what is the difference between PA-12 and PA-11? Is it a different chemical composition (An extra carbon atom here or there) or are they the same "Nylon" but differ in physical state (grain size)?

Sorry to be so "whiny", but it would certainly help if the nomenclature were uniform across the board. I am sure that if you work with it everyday, the terms all blend in the brain and you know what is what, but when all you have is some disassociated web pages to read, it leads to a lot of confusion. And confusion leads to walking away in disgust (i.e.: no sale!).

Mitchell: If you are confused, how do you think the rest of us feel?

The raw material is called PA12, or Nylon. So there is "Basic Nylon Plastic", a nice, but sort of generic name.

Does not specify HOW it is processed (MJF or SLS) into an object. Then, IF you make modification to the formed product, it changes name to "Versatile Plastic" with a prefix of "Natural", "Processed", "Premium" or "Smooth"... Unless, of course it was created with MJF instead of SLS. then it is either "Natural" or "Smooth". But since SLS objects can also be called 'Natural" or "Smooth", you can't tell from the name whether it was SLS or MJF.

"What is that made of?"
"Oh, that is Smooth Versatile Plastic."

Now, go order something in "Smooth Versatile Plastic". Can you FIND that option on the materials selection page when ordering a product? I can't!

Not until I pick "PA12 (SLS) Versatile Plastic" and then I can find a "Smooth" option. But what if it was really an MJF produced item? You said there is "Natural" and "Smooth"... but if I pick "PA12 (MJF)", I find only an option for which color, but I don't see an option for "Natural" or "Smooth". Oops, well. I can find the 2 options if I were to have selected "Multi Color Nylon 12 (MJF)".

But if the mouse is hovered over the word "Materials", the List of Materials does not list either "Basic Nylon Plastic" or "{Natural/Processed/Premium/Smooth} Versatile Plastic" but it does list PA11 and PA12 as well as a 'PA12 [Versatile plastic]" under "Selective LASER Sintering" as well as a "Nylon 12 [MJF Plastic PA12]" under "Multi Jet Fusion (MJF)".

To write this reply I have had to have two browser windows open so I can switch back and forth between this forum reply entry window and attempt to follow various links to try to keep my comments correct as to what one sees on the ShapeWays web pages of what material you get when you click on some unknown material type while hunting for a Material/Process/Post-Process name combination.

There has got to be a better way to name what is available in a more logical way that leaves no ambiguity or guessing.

For those of us that don't deal with it everyday, there is just confusion as to what Material/Process/Post-Process is which... or in the order that your naming convention it would be "Post-Process/Material/" ... oh wait, your naming convention does not include the {print}Process name at all and the Material name depends on the Post-Process type.

I recognize the EXPENSE of getting someone to fuse all the names in all the places into one cohesive, uniform naming convention, but I think it really needs to be done.


And as an aside, the "Material Samples" that are available... YIKES! SIX BUCKS EACH! Okay, I recognize that you are charging the minimum price for printing any material and are probably making them one at a time if someone actually orders one, but SIX BUCKS EACH! Those ought to be a sample of 1 each on a bead chain for FREE. And there ought to be 1 each of the TWENTY EIGHT materials you list, as well as 1 each of the variations produced by Post-Processing (I have no idea how many that would be!). Well, I guess including the 8 items in the Was Casting category might be a bit too expensive to send one each of the Platinum, Gold and Silver (though I would not object if you did send such to me for free!)

Oh, you just don't get it

They are all Nylon and they are all PA12 materials. Shapeways has two types of machines

1. The SLS-machine: Prints from this machine are called Versatile Plastic. Here you can choose from the following finishes:
Natural (no processing)
Processed (mechanically polished)
Premium (mechanically polished for a longer time)
Smooth (smoothed chemically)

The available colors are white, black and some other colors which are printed in white first and then dyed afterwards.



2. The MJF-machine: Prints from this machine are simply called PA12 here. This can be ordered in either
Grey or
Black

the finishes here are:
Natural
Smooth (smoothed chemically, for the Black option only)

For this material there is also an option with glass beads (GB) in it.

So in short, everything with VERSATILE in the name comes from the SLS machine.
Everything that is named PA12 (Grey PA12, Black PA12, PA12 GB....) comes from the MJF machine.

"Basic Plastic" was a special offer where you could order an item for a lower price, and then it was printed in either Natural White Versatile OR Grey PA12, depending on which machine was less occupied at that moment.

Either way, as i said, all those Materials are Nylon, and more specific, the PA12 type (with 12 carbon atoms).

How can you be here for so long and still don't get this?

Yes, I really don't (fully, now) get it.

The way Coelian276 states it helps a lot , but on the web site, there is a confusing mix of names in the various lists of materials that never quite align with each other.

I have spoken with other people (more than one) that have said they drew a 3-D part, or bought a design file, and came to ShapeWays to try to get the part made, but gave up on selecting a material because of the confusion of what the various materials are when reading the "Materials" list (from the menu at the top) to moving to the "Tools" portion to test for design problems, then going to the order sequence to select the material. So I know I am not alone in my "not getting it".

Well, have you ever touched this material with your hands? How suitable is it, for example, for small models, such as 1/144 1/100 scale? Non polished versalite was too.. raw. Is basic similar?