Not All Material Are Created Equal ....

Well of course we all know from material to mateiral there are different specs. Versatile is not the same as sandstone ot gold. However when Shapewys sunsets a material like fine detail plastic and then uses gray detail plastic and oops gray melts in the shipping truck over the summer so hre is tan detail plastic, some of us said wait do we need to recheck all our 3d files.

Of course the answer was no dont worry tan will work the same as fine detail plastic.

Well guess what kids it doesnt. For those of us that do small model parts all is not well at the circle S ranch. (sorry sarcasm here)

I had a customer purchase a 40k kit that gives you a winged backpack where the engine pods are asian dragon heads. This product has been around for many years in fact was one of the first custom jobs I did. Been sold and printed many. times.

Well a new sale came through first tan detail plastic. The model in question is https://www.shapeways.com/product/MKL3BATY4/cyber-samurai-v7-winged-dragon-jetpack

Wait huh thats odd the kit is still shows the mockups for smooth fine detail plastic....weren't those suppose to get fixed last year?????
Sorry more sarcasm

So as mentioned this was a product that printed in fine and finest detail plastic over the years. Well this order comes in and I get a please help us fix this model. The email sported an image of the horns on the dragon head as the offending geometry

The main set of horns is .708mm across. Now the material over states .7 for inner walls and free standing walls. Sprues are different those should be 1mm and thats what I use but free standing should be fine

Now there is a second set of tiny horns which are .469mm and has been fine on smooth fine detail and we were told dont worry it will work the same.

Well I decided to set the order to print anyways ... wow glad they listened and finally let us have this option as the artist versus telling the customer and only giving us the option to either cancel the order or remake the stl -- Sorry further sarcasm

The order printed and was sent out.... but wait I didint get the usual "Important Update About Your Product's Printability" email instead I got this

Good news! Your order #4717141 has been completed and will be on its way to you shortly. Thanks for making us a part of your prototyping and iteration process.

As promised, we've collected feedback from our team throughout the production process to help you improve and learn from this iteration of your product design.

CyberSamurai-v7-wingedDragonJetpack in Tan Fine Detail Plastic (Design Guidelines)
Feedback from our 3D printing engineers:

• Thin Wires: Although we have successfully printed this model in the past in SFDP or XSFDP, we cannot support the successful manufacturing of the model in its current material Tan & Clear Ultra Fine Detail Plastic. We tried it several times, but the new material needs adjusted guidelines as it has slightly different material properties.Some of the measurements are on the edge of our guidelines, making it difficult to produce the model consistently. Please use the design feedback below to edit your model and improve its manufacturing success---------------------The highlighted areas in the attached picture are at risk of breaking. The wires in your model are too thin for the current geometry and cannot withstand our manufacturing process without breaking. The design may be more successful if the weak areas are thickened. We encourage you to alter your design to ensure a successful print. Please consider these options: 1. Thicken the minimum supported wires to be greater than or equal to 0.8 mm. 2. Thicken the minimum unsupported wires to be greater than or equal to 1 mm. If the wire is bearing weight (like a sprue) it must be greater than or equal to 1.0 mm. 3. Reorder the model with the “Print it Anyway” option selected, in which case will ship as is. In this option, we will print the model trying our best to create it to your specifications. There may be possible fragmented or missing geometry depending on the thinness of the wires. Please be aware that the “Print It Anyway” option is only available for orders of your own models. This is not an option for models purchased by customers via the Marketplace. Always consider the size of your model and reinforce your wires if it is needed. Please remember that the minimum guidelines are insufficient for larger models. Be advised that there may be other areas falling below recommended guidelines, apart from the ones indicated in the rejection image. Inspect your model thoroughly and update it according to the guidelines To learn about 3D model printability checks please follow: http://shpws.me/MdWT For more information on design tips and guidelines, visit: https://www.shapeways.com/materials/fine-detail-plastic
  Find additional information in the attached image.

We encourage you to take a closer look at these areas of concern once you receive your 3D printed model to make sure the quality wasn't affected. Need a refresher on our material guidelines? Get it here.

Thanks again for being one of the first makers to participate in our Print It Anyway Pilot. We need your help to keep improving! So please send feedback to community@shapeways.com.

Kind regards,

The Shapeways Team
service@shapeways.com

On top of this email the product has been taken offline. So I went in to 3d tools and here is the kicker the model (which is totally mangled in the renderer) shows as all green and the Show Heatmap View is not viewable.

So here is the issues shapeways is becoming less and less and option for small companies who make a large catalog.

1. cant bulk edit products
2. more and more often want export products to import into shopify
3. no way to bulk check images
4. cant easily bulk change prices (variations doesnt work at all)
5. no way to retest all models and even if we do 3d tools cant be trusted as it all comes down to the tech placing the job.

Thank you everyone for listening to my rant and hope Shapeways is treating you better

I have been receiving many of those reject emails as of late and it is frustrating. Models that have printed fine for well more then a year now. The rejects have varied though between the white and tan materials.

Sadly this is nothing new. Been with SW for over a decade and periodically they get extra-conservative with tolerances, screwing up everyone's models. I haven't ordered anything since the switch to tan, so I don't know what quality it has - I wonder how the full support affects the details?

Actually I think they changed their setting. I just added some new items. Basically variation of a previous design, anf using tan in 3d tools I am getting ALOT more red in the preview than the previous product. This isnt a product made with smooth and now checking tan the previous one was tan as well.

update

So I just updated a new model as mentioned before. This model is a variation of a old design. basically this is a grim dark shoulderpad. I have about 30 designs I have created since 2019. Out of curiosity I looked at one I designed last month. last month the whole print showed green and the show heat map toggle was ghosted out. Tonight its still ghosted and the same area is all red but not failing. Now I went to one that I made many years ago and it is now failing.

@MitchellJetten I emailed this in to support but can you please reply here. I have over 1800 products and there is no way I as a one man shop can go in to each one, open 3d tools check if there is a defect and then if there is go and redesign the model.

If the specs changed for fine detail, again we were told they would not we need another material like one of the many many resins out there that can do finer detail.

Also we need this done with total transparency as the last few upgrades have causght everyone by suprise and we are left having to clean up shapeways mess for weeks and even months.

So here is what I got back from support

"Dear Jeff,

How are you doing?
Please know that are software doesn't check wires, this is only build to automatically check the too thin walls and show them as red. Unfortunately the design guidelines for Tan and Clear Ultra Fine Detail Plastic recently were changed.
https://www.shapeways.com/materials/fine-detail-plastic-3

My apologies that this happened, but we noticed that too many models broken either during the printing process or during transit and this is of course something that we would like to avoid.

Please let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with.

Best,
Christel"

Gee would have been nice if there was a communication to designers that the material specs changed.

Its comical-irony on the one side customers are mad that products failed and they need to reach out to the designer, and now we have the flip side that a material we were told would work the same as the smooth fine detail doesnt actually!!

Let see what shapeways says the next step will be. Of do all the modelling designer switch to my mini fctory's multiple solutions

So here is the latest from shapeways on this issue….

Hey Jeff,

I understand what you are saying, but I am afraid that we don't have a report of the models that maybe must be changed. All models are manually checked at the moment they are ordered. My apologies for this.

From what I understood, production will give it a try for models that were printed some times before to see if we still can print them without needing any changes. So that is a good thing, and if we then still have problems during the printing process we need to reject it so they can be changed.

I noticed the change since Jan 11 but didn't say anything because I'm used to these sneaky changes. I find it funny though that the material pricing remains the same despite now being less forgiving than the old Frosted Detail.

So the customer that ordered the item sent me photos (man the layer likes are bad) and the areas of concern came out fine, but SW still will not let me reactivate the model until I redo it.
here is the please help email image

here are the images from my customer


check out those layer lines oooppphhhh

And here is the current wall thickness in 3dtools. note this was all green before last month

The discrepancies in the printing process, particularly with the dimensions of the horns on your dragon model, seem to have caused some issues. AutoCAD 2024 https://procadis.com/version/autodesk-autocad-2024/ latest features. It’s good to know that despite the concerns, your order was printed and completed. The feedback from the production team could be valuable for future iterations of your design.

Thank you for replying and I appreciate your positive outlook on this. Strangley someone else posted before you but their post was deleted so Im readding it after my response

For this topic please check out https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/serious-problems-with-tan-detail-plastic.102611/ Shortly after I posted my topic this other topic took off.

For those of you commenting on this thread. You need to realize many of us have been making parts for years me I started 2019 others started ten years before that. I personally have over a thousand skus on shapeways others have double triple or even more.

The first issue on this situation is Shapeways provided 1 week lead time on making the initial change from smooth / smoothest fine detail plastic to gray and clear fine detail plastic. So designers were not given any time to react. Shapeways and the main support contact here on the forums Mitchell agree they did a bad job.

The second issue is there is no way to batch update products either at the stl file level or the product description level you need to go in one at a time. Currently I am dealing with many product update issues (IP issues with games workshop), making sure materials and products renders are inline with what I want to offer , product descriptions that referenced the old material, and lastly Shapeways sometimes changes prices and we need to manually change them as there tools dont work on a lot of situations.

Third issue when we heard of the new material our response was please run some process to see if our products need to be revised because of the new material. The responses are there is no way to do a automated check of existing products just wait to a job fails. Bad customer experience in my book and to your comment of "feedback from the production team could be valuable for future iterations of your design" there was none. the mentality is just oh make things thicker.

Next on this issue we were told the specs from Gray and Clear and eventually Tan would be the same as the original smooth and smoothest fine detail plastic. So when the change happened it was nothing to see here, and over time with no notice specs were changed. Also January this year Shapeways did a silent spec change with out telling anyone.

Fourth. the current tan solution is a worse quality product for model products than the original smooth fine detail plastic a product that was in place for many years before I started in 2019. Now to replace a product in 2023 and have resolution and resilience issues go down is unheard of in 3d printing every few months we hear of vendors improving the quality of materials more detail, more flexible etc etc etc not here. As you can see on the other thread several designers have complained and we have customers who have complained but there has been no discussion from the powers that be, so again to your comment "feedback from the production team could be valuable for future iterations of your design" its not there.

Fifth the tools provided by Shapeways to see if you item is in compliance do not work correctly. It currently uses a blanket measuring that really are not inline with the specs. Also if the tool fails you can not make a product in the material. So I can in my cad program say ok make sure items are the min spec or higher, but at the end of the day the tool trumps all. Currently the wire thickness tool on Shapeways is not working it wont provide a pass or fail so the past 6 products I have made I will need to loop back and re confirm if the items are ok or not.

So thank you for your commentary but please note there is more going on than my tongue and cheek post =)



------ Missing Post -----------
Let’s dive into the situation you’ve encountered with Shapeways and the Cyber Samurai winged dragon jetpack.

Material Variability:
Different materials have distinct properties, and it’s essential to choose the right one for your 3D models.
Shapeways’ transition from fine detail plastic to gray detail plastic, and then to tan detail plastic, can indeed cause confusion and unexpected results.

The Cyber Samurai Jetpack:
The Cyber Samurai V7 Winged Dragon Jetpack is a fascinating design with intricate details, including dragon head engine pods.
Over the years, it has been successfully printed in fine and finest detail plastic.

Tan Detail Plastic Surprise:
When an order came in for tan detail plastic, you assumed it would work similarly to fine detail plastic.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The material properties of tan detail plastic differ, leading to unexpected challenges.

Thin Wires and Geometry:
The main issue arose with the dragon head’s horns. The main set measured 0.708mm across, while a second set was even smaller at 0.469mm.
Shapeways’ 3D printing engineers found that these thin wires were on the edge of their guidelines for successful manufacturing in tan detail plastic.
The material’s properties made it difficult to consistently produce the model without risking breakage.

Design Feedback and Solutions:
Shapeways provided valuable feedback:
Thicken the minimum supported wires to be ≥ 0.8mm.
Thicken the minimum unsupported wires to be ≥ 1mm (especially if they bear weight, like a sprue).
Alternatively, reorder the model with the “Print it Anyway” option, where they’ll do their best to create it according to your specifications.

Lessons Learned:
As frustrating as it is, this experience highlights the importance of understanding material properties and adjusting designs accordingly.
It’s great that Shapeways now allows artists like you to make informed decisions during the printing process.

Remember, even in the world of 3D printing, surprises can happen. Adaptability and learning from each iteration are key!

SW changing the rules is not a new problem - us "old hands" have seen it time and again. (Been here since around 2012...) My issue is the terrible surface quality of Tan, coupled with it being brittle. It simply isn't a true replacement for the old FUD. Now that everyone is using those printers that add lots of supports and produce smooth grey products, you'd think SW would offer similar. I know they tried it some years ago with that black material, but things have moved on and it's time they looked inti it again! Tan simply isn't worth having.

Good to know spammers are getting zapped!

I hear ya on unsuitable models for particular processes. I didn't get a chance to try the BDHA before it was pulled, so have no first-hand experience of that rodeo, but is it possible to offer something better than Tan? Is it possible to offer SLA with strict guidelines and even a specific checker tool? I'd go so far as to suggest a support-placement tool for the user to download and use themselves on their models so the resulting upload is effectively printer-ready. Yes it'd be a change from designing for the other plastics, but we'd learn...

@MitchellJetten for the resin if Shapeways is looking for ideas. Could you look at resin printing as a new service. Similar to what you are doing with CNC.
The reason would be instead of the designer sending you a stl, we would send you a chintobox or lyncee slicer file with supports. Many of the 3d print sellers either through other printing networks or on etsy sell items with the supports. This would be different than you other ready to use prints you do in other materials.

I understand the potential difficulty. Since the kinds of models affected are those we'd only want to sell in the SLA material anyway, the easiest solution is to insert a "SLA/ not SLA" switch at the upload screen, so it gets directed to the appropriate processing algorithms - which would be mutually exclusive. That way a potential SLA model is identified from the get-go and is ONLY processed for SLA printing. If the owner also wants a version in other materials they can upload a second model and tick the "not SLA" option for that one so it follows the existing standard processes.

SW needs to do something, or the existing Tan option will kill the entire miniatures hobby end of the business.

I today got a complaint from customer. they bought the printed version of some shields. They asked if they could get the stl as the detail on the tan is awful and the layer lines are bad. Luckily I had already set up my shopify store with stl options. I added my best sellers and will add more when customers ask.

@MitchellJetten I know we are beating a dead horse. the issue is repeat customers are seeing the bad quality and walking away. Doing a reprint will not solve the issue. its the material vs what else is out there. Its just a point that many people dont want to invest in a printer at home.