Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Second model in the same week that went down from 100% successfully printed (one of them was successfully printed four times, but now finally rejected) to "first to try". Rejections of unprinted models are usual, but this isn't.

This led me to think if it may have some more reasons in the backstage to these ultra fast pricing changes that will temporary reduce the rate of prints, such as high wear of machines or lack of trained personnel.

I have a few questions based on the image below, please just for my complete understanding:

Assumption- this is my preferred orientation and there this is a two par model (+$2).

1. Is the machine space volume calculated based on the straight overall bounding box in blue or is it based on the bounding box MINUS the orange volume?
2. Is the height calculation based on the overall Z height of the model or are the orange areas in the side view subtracted (assuming Z is from the platen surface up)?
3. I assume that the wax calculation is based on the 2.8mm + the wax up to the bottom inside surfaces of the parts in this arrangement bounded by the plan view outline of each part- are the orange and white areas between and around the parts excluded?
4. Can I request that no other parts be printed above my model to avoid any support on the upper surfaces, obviously above the two shells and especially above the part to the right which is the lowest?

I would prefer a Shapeways reply, and whomever replies could you please address the questions point by point.

For anyone else- would you have any recommended positioning of the rear part. particularly in the plan view to lessen the plan view footprint?

BTW, what you cannot see is that I have some parts sprued up and nested inside the tender shell and the two shells are sprued together at the bottom.

Thanks in advance.

I have a question in a similar vein (i think). When i upload my files, i do not necessarily sort the parts accounting for machine space or items needing to be flat as I don't know how they are going to be oriented in the print. I've gathered something i didn't fully understand about FUD/FXD in this discussion in that every part has to be printed off the platform, and that parts aren't printed in space above other items if I'm reading things right. This means, that for my models, a tech has to take the parts within the STL and organize them onto the build plate. Will the visualization/cost estimating tool account for this (ie organizing parts into a printable pattern for cost estimating), or will people who upload like i do need to manually lay everything out to get an accurate pricing when we upload models in the future?

For example, my HO Scale Signal box is linked here: https://www.shapeways.com/product/DJBSY2P2B/cabin-d-model-full-levers-ho-scale

It has the four main walls and the roof wire-frame, and within them are some of the detail parts for the structure. Some individual parts are sprued, but the entire item is not. I'm flagging this one as the feedback i got from shapeways is that this item will have a 50% price increase. What I'm less clear on now based on this thread, is has shapeways for printing moved the parts (ie take the roof and bring it to a position where its over the build platform).

Thanks

Stephen

As I said the decreasing willingness combined with the new pricing is very disturbing in terms of small scale miniature modelling. A key problem with small miniatures on SW is that injection molding can do almost everything FUD can do at the cost of lower than WSF per piece. An important strategy for the small scale modellers is to complement large WSF parts with small FUD parts. With SW raising price on multi parts and forcing big sprue/cages, the prospect is not looking good....

Interestingly, when I follow Stephen's link to his signal box I get a rude pop-up warning about a missing revocation for the security certificate, whatever that means.

Interesting, try just my shop them, its the first item on the third line of my shop: www.shapeways.com/shops/sjgardiner

Not sure why the link i copied for the product from my browser generated something else.

Stephen

To start, until now, in principle each item in your design has been checked by a Shapeway employee to have it printed in the best possible way. So yes, that means he/she will place each item on the tray and decide on its orientation (note that your design is printed together with as many other orders as possible). To aid them I always orientate parts in the best possible way for printing and place them as they can be place on the platform. As a rule I do not stack items on top of eachother. If you do, the wax will damage the areas it comes in contact with. I've had situations where Shapeways stacked some of my items on top of eachother, severly hurting the quality (free reprints though). If you stack items on top of each other in the design, you seem to increase the risk of stacked prints. I tested this once out of curiosity. Other than that I never stack items in the design.

I would assume the computer will calculate prices as if all items are place on the platform, with the cheapest possible orientation. Unfortunately the original post of this thread is not too clear about how separate pieces will be calculated if they can fit inside the design:
As I understand it so far, the computer will calculate the cheapest option (orientation) to print your design. Whether or not it will automatically calculate 'inside' parts as outside parts I do not know. Something that may require attention is what happens if there is not enough room to orientate parts within the printer.... this may well occur with large designs such as your example.
You may end up having to split your design into multiple uploads. The added cost might still be compensated (and then some) by reducing the height of the printed items. In case of your example I can imagine splitting the four walls in seperate pieces to be printed in a horizontal positions (also best quality!). Remove the stairs from one of the wall because it would require wax for the entire wall, etc., etc.
The new rules have potential but it is important to design with them in mind. It is not too hard: as few seperate pieces as possible, as flat as possible (with details facing up for the best quality). split a design over multiple uploads if you have to. Based on the examples I have seen, the punishment for height will quickly be considerably higher than a large increase in footprint. And of course a large footprint will often mean the ideal orientation, so better quality parts.
Personally I'm quite okay with that (depending on the price) since I've been keeping parts as low as possible for a long time... Yes, on Shapeways' request. I've split up designs into <1 cm and >1cm to help them run their printers more efficiently. Small (low) items were printed together, and tall (heigh) items have been printed together. This however only works if they are in separate designs.

Any way, I'm still concerned about what the cheapest orientation will be (complex calculation). If this is opposite of the best orientation I'd say the 70% of models becoming cheaper will not happen. Still hoping on the footprint vs height advantage here....

Hi Stephen, don't worry - these certificate warnings are tied to the website, not the models. It means either SW failed to tick a box when they got their website certified, or failed to keep up payments! I often see its cousin, the "the certificate for this website is out of date" message, again reflecting the website owner failing to renew...

@sjgardiner @Keystone_Details

with regards to you questions around machine space- each separate part is going to have machine space evaluated by the system separately. The visualization will work similarly to the way we show machine space for wsf- its bases on area used in the XY, not the bounding box. In the Z it will be based on the dimensional height of the object. I think that the visualization is up it will better explain how it works, I'll check if we have an image internally that I can post here.

I did this 1:220 scale railroad bridge and it got rejected due to being to long and flowing out side the bounding box . So I went into my drawing and placed it on a 45% angle so it fit in the corners of the bounding box and it printed and came out well this wasn't a trick it just fit the bounding box it was at 12" and this was done in FUD.
I find that us shop owners have been doing a lot of work designing and not getting paid for that. I have to redesign model after rejection after they have been printed several times. and as far as markup if there to high others won't buy due to this small 1:220 scale model I do costing to much. but after my markup then Shapeways markup on sold items. we are doing them for nothing! Now you raising the price which I think will really stop the sales of a lot of models I won't even buy some of the ones I have done ever if they look great and have lots of detail I just won't pay the price for the FUD material which is brittle and easly broken if not handle right no matter what the size unless solid piece which then shoot the price thru the roof. find ways to trick you! how can we do this? You at Shapeways have the people checking after site check which are different Engineers people with a different look at what would print and what wouldn't. Are they all trained the same NO! if you look closely at it you will see where it has areas that were melted due to printing or during cleaning where someone might have taken a short cut and flawed the print but this was a high price piece. who's loss shapeways or mine! I'm just pointing out there are problems all over and changing prices isn't going to save the day!
https://www.shapeways.com/product/TC6BFDCY5/truss-bridge-z-scale

Hope everything is running smoothly.

I'm really excited for the surprise waiting under my spring-christmas tree tomorrow.
In the end - it doesn't matter whether the prices will rise or fall - with quality issues of crystallization you have recently.

Hello,

The crystallization is nothing new. If you do not clean the FUD/FXD and do not use a primer, you will have crystallization over time. When we bought our first FUD designs (almost 4 years ago), they had the same crystallization problems as reported nowadays.
Almost all crystallization can be avoided using the above mentioned cleaning and painting proces. For info, look here: https://railnscale.com/tips-english/
Ofcourse it would be very much appreciated if SW would come up with proper cleaned and cured FUD/FXD parts as well as proper instructions how to clean and post process your parts.
Also the supplier (3DS) of the FUD printers should be able to provide data, since this issue is not new and also not new to this supplier.

But in the 3D printing world it often seems that the professional parties (Shapeways, 3DS) are acting more like hobbyists, in stead of the paying customers and designers.

Regarding the price changes, we will see. It certainly costs a lot of effort to straighten out the prices again and to redesign parts.

Regards,
Maurice

No, this is a different problem, where the material is physically breaking down over time, even after proper cleaning and painting. As the material breaks down, the growth consumes surface details first turning the surface of the object to powder which flakes off. The fear is that ultimately the material will continue to break down dissolving entirely. See this thread (click here). SW is very aware, investigating, and conducting tests.

Regarding the repricing, I anxiously await the change.

Well, luckily we've never experienced a braking down of FUD. We've ordered all our designs at least once and cleaned and painted them.
What I read here about the so-called detoriation of surfaces appear to me as surfaces that were covered by support material. You have to remove the support wax, and unfortunately the surface quality of the covered areas is not so nice as you would have liked. The areas are rougher.
We've never seen details being eaten away. The only details you're likely to loose is a result of the manual cleaning process.

So, I'm less concerned about this problem. Certainly I'd like to see better cleaned surfaces by SW.

The crystallization (a.k.a. disco ball effect) is something that is a lot harder to avoid. There I think SW is not UV-curing the parts good enough. So maybe the printers need to be reapaired and cleaned more often? The glittering can be removed with a soft brush, although paintwork may appear a bit duller (not shining) anymore.

Both defects are discussed in the thread you are referring to btw.

Regards,
Maurice

How can you test print! When you do a test print and Shapeways sends it to you then you place it up for sale then a customer orders it and it get rejected. They don't even know what will or will not print even at 100%. You have these rules with support wire and wall size but who really knowwhat will print each printer does it on thing a human set them up and places the model in the printing order! I have many piece that print and was outstanding and looked great but order another one and it was rejected or got it melted like it was in the oven to long and they still sent it maybe check! maybe not who knows! No one Knows they will say it was shipping or something. to many problem that need there attention before messing with prices. I think they are just trying to make up with all the damaged models they send out where is the QA? they have to replace so it become a bigger problem! I got the one so what happened some one need glasses! as one other comment was made! Melted!

Hi, when will we know when the price change will take place? Is it going to happen to the entire site at the same time? Is it going to take a week?

And another question: I know the calculations took a long time (hence Mel_Miniatures' question I presume). I updated many models in the past week. Will they have their calculations etc updated as well?
i.e. do you have an old/static database with the new pricing, or is the database completely up to date with the updated and new models?

It is good to read that your shop has not been affected.

The evidence and volume of reports clearly indicate that the problem is real, the chemical stability of FUD is now a serious concern, sufficiently that SW is investigating and I am glad for their efforts. Hopefully, the material experts at SW and 3DS looking into the problem will have good advice for us soon since the problem has the potential to threaten every shop built on products made in FUD.

Now back to the repricing....

Ngineer>
I guess it recalculates all the models after announcment of this plan (or for even longer time) "on fly" - probably the system takes model, makes recalculation and give it some flag "Recalculation done" - storing the new price data along with old price data. Then it crawls through the database and looks for models without this flag. On update last week you either got this flag immediately or not - but it doesn't really make big difference. If not, the calculation for that model got second round.
And now we are probably waiting till there is 0 models without this flag and in that moment the new prices will show up.

Otherwise it wouln't make sense, that there would be some models "left behind" with the old pricing in future.

Yes, there will always be cases where a model you've printed before suddenly fails, but that's not your fault, that's a shapeways QA issue. My problem is with people who throw up a 3D design, don't order a print and expect other people to test their models for them. As I said with single piece models this is less of an issue, but anything with multiple pieces or that needs assembly along with none printed items, the idea of letting other people test the print when you will be making a profit seems morally wrong.

Many of the designs I have that aren't for sale would probably print right 100% of the time if they were printed with the correct orientation. Unfortunately my tests (as documented earlier) show this doesn't happen all the time, and when a bad orientation is chosen the models are useless. I could just hope prints will come out right but I'd prefer to hold back from selling those designs so as to ensure, to the best of my ability, none of my customers end up with a useless print. It's all about using the service shapeways offers for the best experience for your customers,

Mark