Help All Along the Way
Global Customer Service Team and in-depth tutorials to answer your questions
Highest Quality Prints
3D print in 40 high-quality materials, using the best industrial 3D printers available
Global Design Community
Get support and feedback from the world's largest 3D printing community
How it Works
1
Design Your Product
- As you create your 3D model, you have access to material guidelines, tutorials and a global community and support team.
2
Upload to Shapeways
- Your 3D model goes through automated printability checks and you get instant pricing in 40+ high-quality materials.
3
We'll Make it Come to Life
- We 3D print in your selected material, using the latest industrial 3D printers. It takes 10 people to bring your product to life.
4
And Deliver Worldwide
- Fast turnaround time and global shipping, so you can hold your product in your hands as soon as possible.
What Our Community is Saying
Price was very affordable. You guys have the best submission system and tools... And it most importantly, it looks fantastic!
Creating an awesome object from scratch is always fun and to hold it in your hands is magic but when you receive positive response from the community it was designed for is priceless!
Shapeways has been super with me! I am new to this and they always take the time to answer all my questions... Shapeways and its employees are incredible!
Shapeways is awesome. The ability to create anything your imagination and capabilities allow is a powerful thing. I'm in love.
Get the Help to Get You Started
Preparing Blender Files for 3D Printing
If you have a model created from several objects or meshes, first make sure that each individual mesh is manifold (water-tight). Any vertices that get selected when you press that key combination are non-manifold vertices that have to be fixed. Often, fixing these is just a matter of creating new faces (F key) out of sets of 3 or 4 vertices.
Things to keep in mind when designing for 3D printing
If you're new to 3D printing, this mini-tutorial covers some of the most common things to keep in mind when designing your model. These basic principles will prepare you for designing for 3D printing, using your existing 3D modeling skills.
Design for Cheaper Printing
To best assist you in designing your 3D models, we’ve collected a series of design tips to help you optimize the price of your model, based on the material you are printing in.
Designing for Full Color Printing
Like many of our printer technologies, our full color sandstone printers work by laying down thin layers of powder and selectively binding this powder together to produce solid parts. Unlike our other printer technologies, this printer also uses a set of CMYK printheads to color the part while binding the powder together to produce the colorful solid parts.
