Why do we even have material guidelines if Shapeways techs refuse to follow them?

Discussion in 'Materials' started by javelin98, Jul 22, 2016.

  1. javelin98
    javelin98 Well-Known Member
    Seriously, Shapeways! Why do you even publish material guidelines if you aren't going to observe them yourselves? Once again, I've had models rejected as being "too weak" to print, even though they meet all the published guidelines on the applicable materials page.

    I have some itty bitty starships which are connected by a sprue, which is 1.5mm thick. The minimum unsupported wire thickness (and unsupported wall thickness) for WSF is 1mm, so my design already exceeds that by 50%. Either change the guidelines or print the models so my customers aren't continually pissed off. Those are sprues, anyway, so the models will be removed from them and they'll be discarded. It isn't my fault if I, in good faith, have already followed the posted guidelines.

    I feel like there is a marked degree of inconsistency between Shapeways technicians in applying the material design guidelines. If you say I can safely design and print an item of 1mm thickness for an unsupported wire, you should honor that. I had already gone through and increased the thicknesses of my sprues on 64 individual products based on a previous rejected model, and now I'm told that I have to go through and increase them again. I hope you understand my frustration; you're costing me dozens of hours of rework and upsetting my customers, when I've already met or exceeded your requirements in good faith. And, frankly, how am I to trust that the next tech won't just shake his/her head and declare that sprues of "whatever" thickness are just too darn thin and tells me to go back and redesign everything all over again?

    Shopkeepers and designers need consistency and reliable design parameters. So I ask you again: either change the posted guidelines, or print my models.
     

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  2. Andrewsimonthomas
    Andrewsimonthomas Well-Known Member
    Hey @javelin98 sorry to hear about this.

    Can you give some more context so we can help? what was the product URL?
     
  3. javelin98
    javelin98 Well-Known Member
  4. he6agon
    he6agon Well-Known Member
    I've had the exact same experience multiple times. It's frustrating when I have two or three examples of the rejected part in my hands from previous orders.

    I design many things on sprues where the model of the sprue stays the same and the detail parts change or I iterate the design of the detail parts slightly over successive orders. I just have to push myself away from the computer when I get one of those rejection emails, especially when it's for a customer's order. And it's even worse when the customer is a guest and not a registered member or a repeat customer: at least I can contact the registered or repeat customers in those cases, but the guests? Forget it. They probably won't waste their time.

    And over what? It's a sprue for crying out loud! It's not a structural element. It is obvious this is the case to anyone who has ever looked at a model kit.
     
  5. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    At some point the guidelines changed, but probably were not clearly advertised (SW classic). 1.5 mm single stick is below current text, it has to be 2mm dual attachment. Why? *shrug*

    Model kit sprues have a different reason, and technical constraints. In few words, the plastic flows thru them.
     
  6. javelin98
    javelin98 Well-Known Member
    Excellent. Time to go back and revamp another 64 products, which will, of course, revert them to a First to Try status. Bugger.

    So here's what I'm going to do, so that I am *again* in compliance with the design requirements. sprue example.jpg

    And now, to see how long I can get away with this before another technician decides he doesn't like the cut of my jib.
     
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  7. PHamann
    PHamann Member
    Well, you might say that it's "just a sprue" and gets trimmed away, but during printing and handling, it's the very fragile thing that keeps your single "part" from needing to be handled as 6 or 8 or 12 separate little parts. If your "just a sprue" breaks during processing, not only does that multiply the number of parts that every downstream SW tech now needs to handle, but I'll guess that your customers also would BMC about a "broken" part from SW.
     
  8. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    It's not only a "technician decision".. there is also a significant number of cases where an item breaks in post-production, and they have to adjust accordingly.

    One small thing I'd double check.. on your sprues, do the vertical shells fully overlap the parts above/below? If the faces are "extremely close" but not overlapping, there might be a bit of area there that is weaker than you think. A long time ago, I received a couple of models where essentially the parts were separated by only one un-fused layer in the printer. With a bit of flexing, they separated.
     
  9. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    Looking on archive.org, it appears the 2mm sprue rule has been with us (unannounced as far as I could tell from the Official Announcements forum) since december 13, 2014. Maybe it is just something about the time of year (higher ambient temperatures, student temporary workers, or whatever) that increases the failure rate of previously printable models ? (Just got one cancelled myself - part originally printed fine two years ago, but I gave the old model away. Not liking the thought of making connections any thicker, I sent the unchanged file elsewhere and received a perfect print well ahead of time)
     
  10. Sparkshot
    Sparkshot Well-Known Member
    Ggg Typing this again as my old phone refuses to edit mistakes properly. All I can say is the above I feel and agree with perfectly. Apart from some hood prints I have had nothing but trouble and literally weeks and weeks and months when you add it of redesigning the whole range...multiple times.

    I have kept the sprue geometry standardized so when Shapeways cancel a customers order I 90% the time do not get a re-order and if it is a guest I cannot contact them. I have had to redesign the entire range Many times and buggered if I am going to piddle about much more with it.

    As a buisness plan this is whack and I can only think all the rejected orders (when they printed before several times!) is due to different people doing the checks. Having goal posts connected to conveyer belts is useless. Also if a Shapeways 'engineer' breaks a model in post production or cleanijg and they have to do a re-print ok fair enough but as sometimes that isn't a design fault we still loose the first to try thingummy. Also redesigning the whole range looses first to try and cancelling orders due to sprues and other silly things as a buisness plan needs looking at.

    I'm greatfull gor Shapeways giving us this opportunity to sell our wares buy I can not any more realistically trust Shapeways as being my main way go advance my sales because they are way to unreliable (and in my opinion expensive) so I'm saving up for my own 3DPrinter to control things. One thing is for sure, I wouldn't cancel customers orders, I'd make sure the print is completed regardless of difficulties.

    Shapeways' need consistency and a realistic understanding of different types of customers.

    Who gives a hoot about a sprue?? I and others do not care if the sprue is cracked as when we recieve the model the first thing we do is break the damn things ourselves.

    The only reason we add them is to drop the price due to the extreme effort it takes and the 1 calory used to pick the bloomin' things up with handelling charges....but then we get cancelled orders and loose out on a loy of money. I am probably 60- 100 pound worse off than I could be due to cancelled orders...all for stupid things like sprues...and things that printed many times before!

    Ok better leave it here as I'm in rant mode. I already kicked off and sent a really bad email once so zip.
     
  11. mkroeker
    mkroeker Well-Known Member
    Just got an email asking me to take part in a questionaire (how do I rate the print quality of my model in one particular material etc.) where the one and only order I ever made in said material had been cancelled by shapeways. This does not throw a good light on QA efforts...:(
     
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  12. Sparkshot
    Sparkshot Well-Known Member
    Automated emails for the win!

    I tried to answer the questionare about the HDA but it only asked if I would like more colours or not which confused me as I was expecting to answer a few but no worries.

    I did a post on the forums for HDA as it didn't work out well, not saying the material is bad but I think a bad choice for my designs.
     
  13. javelin98
    javelin98 Well-Known Member
    Q: When is 2mm not 2mm?
    A: When it's measured by a Shapeways technician.


    Here we go again.

    After all the 2mm sprue controversy, I went back and reworked dozens of models (and I still have a couple hundred to go) to make sure they met the new guidelines. Now, this product was designed with 2mm sprues from the start and meets or exceeds all the stated guidelines for WSF, WA, FUD, and FXD. It's even printed successfully multiple times.

    And yet, that's still not good enough.

    Interestingly, the problem with this model is the sprue, not exposed gun barrels or anything like that. (Fun fact: I started putting parts on sprues on the advice of Shapeways back in 2011, when I first started modeling.) I have to wonder if these parts are breaking because they are poorly designed, or if because they are being poorly handled by the SW techs pulling them from the printer. The inconsistency in how techs are rejecting models is disheartening.

    I am so frustrated, and worse yet, my customers are frustrated. If I wasn't wearing this tinfoil hat, I would swear that SW is out to get scale modelers, or maybe just me personally, but I know that's not the case. Still, for a technology that was supposed to be able to do things that traditional manufacturing couldn't, it's terribly disappointing to see how badly it's being handled. The 3D tools are no help, because this product, like others that have been rejected, passed all the tests for printability and yet still were rejected.

    I am reminded of a card game we used to play in high school. It was called Mao, and it played very similar to UNO. There were three rules: 1) It plays like UNO. 2) Only the dealer is allowed to speak during gameplay. 3) We can't tell you the rest of the rules. The way the game worked, people new to the game would learn the rules only as the dealer penalized them for breaking one of the rules, and for added fun, the dealer was allowed to make up one new rule per hand. I very much feel that I'm playing Mao with the SW techs right now, and each time a product is ordered, the tech of the day is allowed to make up one rule. Design guidelines? Irrelevant! 3D tools? Pointless! It all boils down to who is handling your product that day and what kind of mood they are in. At least, that's how it feels.

    Please, Shapeways, get over your sprue allergy and put some consistency into your treatment of our products.
     

    Attached Files:

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  14. Sparkshot
    Sparkshot Well-Known Member
    Yo Shapeways... (I did say I'd keep banging on until something is done!)

    LISTEN to what Javelin98 just said.

    Seriously, please take a gooooooood heed to it because he basically just repeated what I said in my old whinge emails.

    Every single point he made I agree with 100% and I know others do too.

    I was going to go to the mainstream model rail magazines for SCC Advertisement but you got no chance as I too have had to REPEATEDLY redesign 50 or so models because of sprues and customer order fails/cancels. buggered if I'm keeping this game up forever, can't bare the thought of having a bunch of orders cancelled in one go anymore - saving for my own 3DP!

    Hearing 2mm sprues are failing is very worrying. My latest major redesign of everything has 2mm sprues...many of which are fatter than components which makes no sense.

    If any of my models fail on a 2mm sprue I think it will be the last straw for me.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2016
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  15. he6agon
    he6agon Well-Known Member
    I have eliminated sprues from my most recent designs. Since you can put several parts in a FUD/FXD model without penalty, my problems are solved for most of my models. I'll still sprue WSF models, but those are typically larger structural elements and not railroad detail parts.
     
  16. Sparkshot
    Sparkshot Well-Known Member
    Due to my items being quite big they are expensive so most people order in WSF....Where most the bother is.

    Have sold bugger all these past 2 or 3 months though no doubt partially because Brexit and the exchange rate has gone to poop.
     
  17. javelin98
    javelin98 Well-Known Member
    One of the reasons I have things on sprues is that they tend to be small and I don't want them to get lost in post-processing. I'd do without them, but it was actually on Shapeways' advice that I started doing the sprue thing and it has generally been okay.
     
  18. Sparkshot
    Sparkshot Well-Known Member
    When you, like me use a standard sprue geometry in most places 1 cancellation usually means a whole shop re-design. We both thoroughly had enough with it.

    Myand your latest re-design gave things
    2mm sprues and so as they failed you on 2mm sprues I think that is bang out of order and I'm genuinly worried. Doesn't sound generally ok to me. :/

    Maybe it was ok but it seems yo me we are at the mercy of the Pot Noodle supping numpty behind a desk on the day and what mood they are in.

    Wish I wasn't so negative about this but until they sort something out it seems all we can do is whinge.
     
  19. he6agon
    he6agon Well-Known Member
    As far as I'm concerned, if Shapeways loses any of the parts in a given model file, they can expect to reprint at a minimum the missing parts if not the entire order. I'm not going back through a circular logic process of sprue, no sprue, sprue, and so on. If that works for someone else, fine, but I've had enough of these games.
     
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  20. MikeyBugs95
    MikeyBugs95 Well-Known Member
    I had a similar experience but in FDP. I had slightly changed a model file to raise parts off of the sprue and attach them with small columns. I re-uploaded it and someone ordered it but it was rejected and it wasn't because of the sprue. It had printed successfully multiple times before which really bugged me. Instead of going back in and trying to edit the MANY flagged areas, I decided to take the file off the shop because I had an expanded version up as well. It cost a bit more but had twice the parts. Although this is slightly different, it still bugged me.
     
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