**UPDATE: NOW LIVE!! **First To Try & Beta Products**

Hi.

Just now I've received three (kind?) messages telling my three full color sandstone robots models had fell into the Dark Side:



Did I say before that I love the way the US production team works with our designs?

Why almost all the rejections and issues with previously printed models comes from the States?

I would like that somebody from shapeways will make an statistic about US and European rate of rejections and issues. He may have a surprise. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Best regards

Luis

P.S.: To US production team: I love you too.

Had that happen too, and would like to see at least the actual success rate figure included in the email. Arithmetics is rather simple - take a model that (apparently) printed successfully on the first attempt before the introduction of "first to try" but has some exposed or otherwise marginal area. Next take a worker in the wrong phase of the coffee cycle, said section breaks off or crumbles away during cleaning or CA glue treatment. Voila, success rate plummets from 100 to 50 percent, warning message gets sent (without any photographic or textual information about the nature of the failure).
At the same time, a reprint is scheduled (unless you selected PIA, in which case I now suspect you just get what is left of your model) and success rate subsequently rises to 75 percent again.

EDIT: to clarify, I meant the model demotion message, not neccessarily the US vs. NL topic. (Though one can probably not be absolutely sure production is not outsourced to the respective other plant depending on workload ?). NL very likely has the more experienced workforce, but with
the fragile FCS process I suspect it may well be down to the dexterity of the individual (which would tend to be variable as well).

"First to Fail" and "the Feed":

Hi.

I've been watching that some (all?) of my sold models that were in "First to Fail" yet, aren't showed in our loved "the Feed" when they are ordered.

Did I loose something or really nobody write about this "nice" FTT feature before?

Hi.

Today a previously printed several times model fell from "product" to "first to fail " again.

This is my fourth model demoted THIS WEEK, and all of them were previously printed several times!

Something has changed in shapeways?

If the "first to fail" feature was to "suggest" to designers to make a first test printing, this new demoting politic encourage us to do the opposite thing as useless!

How long does it take to update the "first to try" status? I've ordered 5 of my products, and all them have been printed in at least one material. They're all marked "first to try", though. They've not been shipped yet, since the red SF Star and Cross is still being produced.

Update: right after sending the previous message, I received e-mails on product printability and shipment. So, here is the answer: printability is updated after shipment. But, it seems that it has been done wrong: it's now a "product" in WSF and black SF, but not in color SFP as it should be (I ordered in red SFP and frosted detail)

Was the red SFP entirely successful, or did it register with a lower than 100 percent success rate ? Having only the non-polished versions promoted to product could mean that the initial print of your model broke (or had crucial detail abraded) in the polishing tumbler.

You're right. Red SFP had a 50% success rate, while WSF or black SF had 100%. But nobody has bought WSF or black SF. (Edit: other products I've bought in colored SFP also have WSF success rate of 100%. It seems that they're being marked as part of the production process.)

Hey leandroarndt, thanks for posting here and for using Shapeways. I'd be more than happy to help you figure out what happened.

When you place an order for one of your products in a material with various offerings (such as strong and flexible) we do our absolute best to gain as much information as possible about the production of your product. Not only for that material, but for all other offering options for that material. This means that when you order Red Strong & Flexible Polished we do our best to understand what that would mean for other strong and flexible materials such as Black Strong & Flexible and White Strong & Flexible.

Our dyed strong and flexible offerings go through the most rigorous production and finishing processes. When a product successfully ships in one of these materials we have a high level of confidence that it could go through other production processes that are less rigorous.

In your particular scenario what happened was that you ordered your product in Red Strong & Flexible Polished and it had a 50% success rate in going through all of the production processes for Red Strong & Flexible, the most rigorous production process for our strong and flexible offering. Although it has a low success rate for Red Strong & Flexible Polished this doesn't mean that it can't be made in Black Strong & Flexible. In fact, because Black Strong & Flexible goes through a less rigorous process it's very likely that we would be able to produce it a very high level of confidence.

As a shop owner we know that there's quite a bit of upfront capital associated with ordering your own model in many different material offerings, so we use as much the information we can capture through the production process to ensure we're best informing you and your customers.

We're always looking to improve the level of detail we capture during our production and finishing processes and how it relates to our other material offerings within our portfolio, and you can expect us to do this in the future. If you have any more questions please let us know, we're more than happy to help!

Thanks @ChristianA! Shapeways is known for helping designers, and this seems to be a deserved fame. The Star and Cross is my only model with an obvious weakness, and I was a little bit anxious about it's success rate. Is there anybody I could email to know if I'd better upload a strengthened model for polished materials, and even the best way to strengthen it? I'm also curious to know if it would survive polishing if casted in brass.

Hi,

Just joining this thread, as I'm reading up about this First To Try notice, due to the xSF revised pricing & new pricing calculations, which resulted in many of my xSF models being back into this First To Try stage as I needed to do a bit of tweaking (i.e. sprue 2 parts into 1) to get them back to the original price (or cheaper)...

My philosophy is still to print out a new model before I open it up for sale, but with minor modifications that's just costing me to much!

So, although I do understand the wish to reduce rejections and complaints and the need to set customer expectations correctly, 'First To Try' is from an (online) marketing perspective disastrous wording!
It's like putting 'You seriously want to buy this?' on the 'Buy Now' button...

My suggestions:
a) At least give it a positive spin: 'NEW!' or 'Upgraded', 'Improved!' etc., or as suggested already 'Recently Updated!".
Something positive! 'First To Try' is negative.

b) Better: don't mention it on the product page; instead move it to a later stage in the purchase process, i.e. after the customer has put the product into his/her shopping cart, and preferably after the shipping details etc. have been entered, so on the review page. Mark the items with an icon, and at the bottom of the page explain about that these product(s) haven't been printed that much yet so there is a risk etc..

c) Don't explain it in a few words in a little popup box, but give a better (and positive!) 1 or 2 liner (but not on the product page)

d) (more advanced), remove 'First To Try' on the product page, split the 'Buy Now' button into 2 buttons:
one fancy button with a text like 'YES, I want to buy this recently released product' and the other dull looking (e.g. more grey/dark), with a text like
'I like it, but I'm not sure about this new product; instead show me more proven products!', where clicking the latter button will lead to another product from the same shop (as in the 'More From..')

e) Furthermore you might want to consider to tweak behavior based on the fact if the designer has uploaded a photo to the product page. Obviously you can't automatically verify if the photo displayed is a photo of the actual product, but if the designer is sincere, and took the effort to upload a photo, there is more chance the product has been printed. Something to consider.

Cheers,
Robert