New price structure

Will peoples' attempts to create cheaper models in fact cause handling to be more difficult?

For example:

"Person A" may have 3 models, they are solid structures, a cube for example, they are seperate and thus print fine. In the old system provided the models were uploaded as one file there would be only one $5 handling fee. But with the new handling fee it will be $5 per item?

"Person B" may have the same 3 models, only to obtain a single $5 handling fee he'll join the cubes with small sprues, they are within the guidelines but will break easily due to the large models being linked by a small sprue. He could then request that if a sprue is broken that the models be reprinted.

So surely the costs of handling 3 seperate items is much cheaper than 3 items joined (making them one item) with delicate sprues? Yet the easier handling seperate items will cost $15, and the same models joined with a delicate sprue will only cost $5 in handling.

Am I understanding the new system correctly?

Kindest Regards,

Jack

Shapeways seem to have a good idea about what is a sprue and the fact that it does not matter if it gets broken. I've had several items I've submitted with sprues come back without the sprues .

I now don't bother with the sprues other than the case of very small items which would be a problem to handle individuality and are likely to get lost.

It would be nice to get a definitive answer from Shapeways as whether sprues were necessary or a pain - and in what circumstances ( to sprue or not to sprure, that is the question?) but having asked several times and not got a reply I'm giving it my best guess.

I'm guessing that most of what the start-up charge covers is a per order figure and as long as the items are a reasonable size it doesn't take that much longer to get multiple ones out of the machine and into the bag - it's keeping track of the bag after that is the expensive part, so multiple items per STL are not that much of an issue - yet !

well, i've never built sprues into a design, but as i understood it the bronze infusion process necessitates the creation of a sprew which shapeways then removes-- hence a polished spot on the surface of each piece.

what i'm trying to understand is how this applies to a small item vs. a large item specifically in steel. as i said before, i've had jewelry cast in silver and brass and a larger item always requires more sprues (my honeycomb cuff had 3), which means it takes me much longer to clean up than does a small item with one sprue.

hence, i'm still not clear on the handling cost for steel. i understand that sorting and packaging will take longer if the file includes 50 different parts that need to be cleaned, sorted, and packed. so the handling fee is comprised of:

1. sorting and packing- this process is the same for metal and plastic, right? so sorting and packing must account for the first 1.75 of the "handling" fee. the other 4.75 must be for the cleaning. correct me if i'm reasoning from bad premises.

2. cleaning- i have trouble understanding how cleaning a large complex model is as easy as cleaning a small one, or even two small ones. i've seen the videos. there isn't as much surface area on a small item, so it seems to me that it must be easier to clean. is that wrong?

does cleaning include sprue removal after bronze infusion? if so, does a small model have the same number of sprues as a large model? if i put two very similar (or identical) small models into one file, is it twice as much work as if i had one model that was twice the volume with the same surface area? obviously if i put 25 models into a file (which i've done, primarily to make my own life easier), there is a lot more work to finish it, and i don't want to be essentially stealing from you by doing that, which i prefer not to do and i wonder why i wasn't stopped before.

i really don't mean to be obnoxious about this- i just want to understand.

Erica, I think I can help clarify some of your questions. I have a lot of experience operating both powder and deposition printers. While I haven't used a ProMetal setup, I can take an educated guess that maybe could be further 'tempered' by Glenn if he stops in.

I would say, do not sprue metal parts. You are just going to have to accept that very small metal items will raise their price somewhat. I have items that were only a few cm3 before and they did not change much at all. I still think it is a great deal when we are talking about custom, short run production. Sprued metal parts are very likely to break because of the rapid change in thickness. That part will cool first, and the difference in expansion between other parts will cause it to crack. The labor to distinguish, then grind and polish those sprues cannot be given for free. The stem has outlived its use by this stage and might break, but it doesn't matter. When you take into account your labor of removing your sprues and the fact that you won't be able to offer other finishes, it pretty much rules that out for Stainless Steel. Because of the extreme likelihood of failure, I would reject all sprued metal parts if I were reviewing models for Shapeways, except in very specific cases, and they would need a very experienced person to recognize those cases. The best economical action is to order many at once, which you already do.

From a depowdering perspective I can say that removing a part with exposed fine details from a powder bed can easily take ten times more labor. I would also reject parts like that, regardless of the fact that they barely hit the minimum wall thickness, otherwise the cost for all parts would have to rise. I always think about these issues when coming up with the design. My Time Keeper model has 1.8mm elements, but it also has a thick ring around the outside that makes it easy to pick up between the thumb and forefinger and brush it off without breaking it. Also, all of these thin elements are supported after distances of no more than about 1.5cm, and are always supported on both ends, making them far less likely to break, and they are thicker in the direction parallel to how impacting forces are most likely to be applied. In retrospect I regret not explaining all these things to people because some very unlikely designs were created that simply focused on the numbers in the design rules, when the reality is obviously much more complicated.

All in all, it is the attempts to stretch the design rules and get around pricing structures that led to the dramatic price rise for tiny items. This became pretty obvious several months ago after the FUD tests. I know people were not trying to abuse the system, it's just that our attempts to make ultra-economical models broke the Shapeways pricing system. I have to take partial responsibility for doing things that raised peoples expectations without explaining exactly how and why a particular design works. I'm doing my best to rectify that but there is nothing I can do to hide the fact that the reality is indeed complicated and takes some thinking and work if you are going to squeeze out every penny. Please don't describe it as Shapeways "Forcing" you to cheat the system, because as we have seen, that will simply break the pricing model and force the prices even higher, when what we should be doing is recognizing which behaviors are causing the problems and keep it in mind when we create designs moving forward.

3D printing does allow us to do amazing things and the price is far better than any other alternative, but we are going to have to move just little farther from the limits if this is going to work.

But of course people will "abuse" it because it makes the models cheaper, and now with the additional postage costs even more people will try to offset the costs of the postage by creating a single model file with multiple models in.

What I don't understand is, previously the cost of the model (Start Up Fee + cm3 of material) was the whole price, so a % of the Start Up Fee + cm3 price must have been used to pay for the postage. Yes?

So now we pay for the postage why hasn't the price of postage been deducted from the Start Up Free and cm3 price?

So now we effectively pay postage twice?

All of these price increases should have been done by simply increasing the cost per cubic centimeter of each material...

this insane micromanaging of pricing with all of the individual materials having different startup fees makes your site completely incomprehensible to the average customer who doesn't have the time to spend countless hours here on the forums or in the materials pages... keep it simple.

so what if larger items were subsidizing the handling of the smaller ones... the smaller items and orders were subsidizing the shipping costs of the larger heavier orders... so it should have evened out well enough for any problems to be solved by a simple increase in materials pricing per cubic centimeter.

a huge portion of your handling problems and costs come from the ludicrous overpackaging of each order... the individually bagged and stapled header cards are completely unnecessary... especially when many of my items were wrapped in tissue paper inside those cards rendering them invisible anyway despite the pretty packaging....and having orders ship in a ton of separate boxes for the same order is just wasteful and silly.... especially internationally.

SIXTHSCALE, our handling fees are actually set based on careful calculations, which are independent of the cubic centimeter material cost. Think about it -- models need to get touched, sorted, planned in the printer tray regardless of their size. This is the labor cost, and the handling fee is set to cover that. By revealing this unique cost, we're looking to offer more transparency into the process, but I do understand why the info may seem overly complicated. We'll make a point of trying to explain that more effectively.

When it comes to overpackaging, I don't know if you saw the recent blog post or the blurb in this month's newsletter, but a much more efficient version of our packaging is being rolled out now. We're starting with 25% of all orders, and increasing it from there.

Guys stop complaining about the startup costs. Here is reality. Every production environment works on a C*XY cost base. It costs C dollars to start and finish the process and Y dollars per unit to make them. Shapeways is just trying to calculate the actual cost of producing our printsl. Those of you that have had your models go up in price it means shapeways was lossing money on your prints. For those that it has gone down it means shapeways was making extra and this was offseting the models that were losing money. The startup costs here are pretty small. When I get custom made I pay $80+0.5*cubic inches. Custom silicon chips have a startup of $100,000. Most of the startups here are only a few bucks.

There are only 3 things that really bother me. the first is that they lie about shipping cost by using UPS. The cost to ship a package to canada is $16.50. They charge shapeways $6.50 and they charge the recipient direct $10. This is not completely shapeways fault as it is UPS policy to charge both sender and recipient for shipping but it sucks for those that do not realise that the shipping is actually much higher then it is. An option to use USPS would be a hugh improvement because at least they only charge the sebder which means shapeways will see the full cost and as a result our customers will see the true cost of shipping.

The second is that shapeways only gave us a very short notice. Most industries give 90 days notice of price change so that businesses can make ajustments accordingly. 1 to 2 weeks is not enough time.

The third is the fact the programming staff at shapeways especially the new CPO are inept and the CPO should be canned for his total disregard for update standards. The fact shapeways puts up an update once without proper testing is bad. The fact they have put them up multiple times without testing the last 2 of which were within a month would have the CPO canned in any other web company. When you put an update up that is full of bugs it effects us all. They need to be thoroughly tested and only minor bugs should ever make it through the cracks.

So in conclusion startup costs are a necessity. Fire the person responsible for making updates live without testing them first(and testing means having a proper check list of steps to go through which includes making live where the community can help check for bugs)

Hi Hauk,

From the shopping cart, EU shipping price is applied to;
"All EU Countries, Switzerland, Norway, San Marino, Vatican, Andorra, Liechenstein"

Paul

UPS collect import duties for your Government and are allowed to charge a brokerage fee for this 'service'. This is standard practice through out the world. If you choose to use USPS you would still have to pay the import duty and a brokerage fee.

Those of us in the EU have the privilege of paying Dutch VAT, as part of the price Shapeways charge us, instead of our own country's import Duty.

There are so many variable with the cost producing and distributing our models that Shapeways can never be completely fair much as they might want to be.

At some point if you try to factor in every cost not only does the cost of calculating the cost become a significant factor but the process becomes so opaque that the buyer is confused about how the total he is being expected to pay is derived and may see it as unfair anyway.

So the best they can do is some sort of reasonable approximation that rewards people who do it in whatever way is most cost-effective for them to produce and penalizes people who do things in ways which add costs.

So they may make more profit on some peoples orders than others - well life is like that. Unless you are a government contractor working on a cost plus basis you profit margin is not going to be the same on each order.

So although, to some of you, Shapeways charges may seem a bit arbitrary I think they are on the whole OK, fair and, above all, understandable. You know what something is going to cost, it's then up to you to decide if you can make sufficient margin on that for you to make a profit.


Tom

My question still hasn't be answered?

Old FUD Price: $5 Startup + $3.49 per cm3, Postage taken as a % from the FUD Price.

New FUD Price: $5 Startup + $3.49 per cm3, Postage NOT deducted from this as a % but charged in addition!

Why are we not seeing the postage percentage deducted from the new prices when we are now paying for postage seperately????

The old pricing structure did not have postage as a % of the model cost, the deal was $25 minimum order with shipping included. You might interpret that as a % of the model cost, but what if the model cost was only $15? With the new pricing structure the total cost is slightly less (or more, depending which part of the world the model is shupped to.)

.

That's not completely accurate. At least here in Brazil, if the package is sent by USPS, there are only import taxes. No brokerage fees.
Besides, brazilian Customs taxes mail packages based on sampling. Courier packages, such as UPS, are always taxed.
So, usually, my orders when sent by UPS cost me 100% more in taxes and fees. If they were sent by USPS it would be only 60% and as they don't tax every single mail package, there is always a chance of not being taxed (on my other internet purchases usually I am only taxed 1/3 of my orders).

Although I understand the reasons why Shapeways would change their pricing structure, I can't help to feel frustrated with this, specially with the shipping charges to the rest of the world. USD $19.90 seems a lot to ship a small item. I really hope USPS becomes an option soon.

Absolutely NOT true. Over the last months I have been stung by UPS buying supplies from the US and shipped to Canada. I then made an effort to seek out companies that only shipped by USPS and I saved a TON of money. The goods themselves may have been slightly higher but I saved overall cost because I did NOT pay any courier fee, import duty or brokerage fees.

Yes, I do understand that some packages do get "caught" and taxes have to be paid but so far I have been lucky.

Glenn

I have no problem paying the 5% tax UPS charges. But only UPS charges an additional $10 on every package.

Yes, that fee would break me, especially with more charges at the door.

We can only hope that 3D printing picks up steam and that very soon there will be printing services in our own countries. I know that if I had a ton of money to throw around I would be investing in this business!

Glenn

That would be great, unfortunately I don't think it will happen here in Brazil any time soon...