Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

I'll be very ugly on you:
If you don't make difference between "income" and "profit", you will never understand what is happening in capitalistic world around you.
Obviously your models maybe made nice _income_ for SW, but no _profit_ so they actually don't care about losing opportunities to produce models like yours.

The new formula clearly shows, what kind of models makes the profit, what SW _wants_ to produce.
Probably some of those six-bucks you are laughing at.

Sad thing it was not said from beginning - years ago, you would not be surprised today.

But that is about the poor communication from SW we are talking about over and over again, every time with every change.
And every time we are ensured it will get better and every time it is not.

Since you poped-up asking for an answer, let me remind you that multi parts DO NOT raise the total price so much (at least, I do not concern about this so much). For example, it is unreal a 20-parts model kit used to cost $150 before, gets a new $1250 price now - can you understand the huge raise of price? Multi parts issue can be easily fixed by attaching all parts on a sprue and become a single-piece item. Even if not attached, the additional $20 ($1 per part) is not just a big deal to worry about. On the other hand, the price difference between $150 (before) and approx $1250 (after), cannot be justified only by multi parts and as long as Shapeways decided to charge for the wax, we are not gonna stay empty handed.

Yes, "fair" doesn't necessarily mean "cheap", but when (or if) Shapeways will decide tomorrow to extra charge on price for the carton boxes for shipping products or maybe the cost for coffee during work hours, do not get surprised! Shapeways was never cheap (comparing to other factories providing similar services) but we all loved Shapeways for other features such as excelent customer service, informative FAQs, friendly attitude etc. IMHO, the "production" part, was never the strong issue of Shapeways. Friendly communication and effective customer support was! And what Shapeways does? Instead of supporting the weak (and with many problems) "production" issue, it makes it even more unstable! If we need to find competitive prices to 3D print items, is a very easy thing to do. The problem is to find the other forementioned features that makes Shapeways user-friendly.

Multiple part fils have only one effect in price if the material price is under $ 1.
So if the part price is higher than the material.
If one part costs more, for example 15 $ then make the 1 $ part price no big difference.
With 3 parts a $ 15; $ 10; $ 10, plus $ 3 for part. 35 $ + 3 $ = 38 $ (without part 35 $)
At 20 parts a 0.50 $ "material" plus $ 20 for part. 10 $ + 20 $ = 30 $ (without part 10 $)
The prices are without filepries. Only material.

There are parts there is a sprue not possible because model too small
Or it is simply not possible

Let's take this model here as an example.

Yes, it is only one part, but it requires a ton of support wax and machine space relative to its actual material volume.

My models are mostly compact and require very little support material.

Assuming they use the same amount of actual plastic, why should I pay the same as you?
Your model requires a lot more machine time, which (I'm assuming) is one of the biggest costs in the kind of service Shapeways are offering.

Last I checked, Shapeways charges me €8.69 for shipping.
And I'm sure the coffee is somewhere in the "labor" component.

Well, since you asked, the item you selected is only 4cm high and produced with White Strong & Flexible material - no need for "a ton of support wax". Ofcourse, your comment reveals the nasty way you prefer to judge other people's products.

@RolandR @Anyuta3D we're happy for the two of you to discuss how repricing has impacted you personally in here but this disagreement doesn't seem to be heading anywhere useful. Please refrain from continuing to argue.

It's possible to get a CSV file with the old and new prices?

Just to combat some of the doom & gloom here, this monster's base FUD price dropped by $62:

http://shpws.me/OuvA

Now it's much cheaper than the old acrylic materials. Any chance we'll see a price change on them?

I, too, am sorry to hear that your shop has been badly affected. But in your frustration and anger, please stop calling other designers "trolls" and "sad, strange, little man". Try attacking the problem and not the person.

I hope that your shop and all those adversely affected will recover quickly. I am not happy about your loss. But other designers don't deserve your insults either.

@TonyRR yep- if you download your csv now for your shop you'll see old and new prices reflected

Sounds like the industry needs to manufacture printers that allows frosted support materials to be recycled or easily reused. Does the stuff physically change so as to be unusable or does it become contaminated by the print process?

I don't do contract work in 3D printing but it might be wiser to separate out the design work and other handling costs from the production prices at a 3D printing vendor so the customer is responsible for any unforeseen production pricing changes.

And speaking of changes, and not using the csv, is there a good way to filter out store products being sold in any specific materials so they can receive individual inspection and other updates if necessary? I have tried using the marketplace search but it doesn't seem to be exclusive to a particular shop.

@MrNibbles - yes, if I understand the question correctly, before you download you can choose which materials you want to download for- check the box that says "only for-sale materials and choose the material from the dropdown

I'm a csv luddite and will remain so. The question is, is there a way to use the normal SW framework to filter out my products offered in frosted materials. In other words within my product inventory or using some fancy search terms with the market place search. Or perhaps there's a way to use Google search using the site:shapeways.com option?

Many Thanks, czhunter - for a lot of interesting thoughts, comments and statements in this thread!
I think nobody answered, yet, on your below concern - which is also my fear, of course.

I join the club of the people who have their markups all over the place. Some have gone to 0 (even the cases where the product has decreased the price) and some have triplicated the ammount (even the cases where the product has increased the price).

Curiously enough, I've checked with the CSV I downloaded yesterday, they were perfectly FINE yesterday.

Some interesting search results

If I use marketplace search using the term "MrNibbles" only six materials show up on the filter list materials and frosted detail is not one of them. So not a good approach.

If I use marketplace search using the term "Nibbles and Bits" or "NibblesandBits" (my store name) I get ZERO search results.

If I use marketplace search using the term "Nibbles&Bits" (not really my store name so this must actually be a boolean search) I get 18 materials on the filter list and can filter on the frosted material to get 17 product offerings of mine seemingly at the top of the search list followed by 82.5 pages of results from other shops. Presumably none of my other products are buried further down on the list.

But this is the general problem I'm talking about. No need to use a csv for so few models but no great way to otherwise filter out stuff from only my store in specific materials with any surety.

Great!!

I've just realized it!!! Thanks!

I've noticed that some models have wrong old prices, like this one:

https://www.shapeways.com/product/WPYFLH9Y2/millennium-banday-1-144-docking-rings-5-footer

Old ones were way cheaper than now, but on the material tab they show that the actual price is lower.

I think that there's some problem; the product can't be so expensive now... Twice than before. These are quite small parts.

If someone can check it please!!!

Cheers

members have been thrown away for revealing pm content in past. i guess that your violation on shapeways rules missed admin's attention. or not?

@TonyRR will you send a screenshot of the discrepancy? you can forward it to service. My understanding however is that the CSV should be absolutely correct- the materials page may be pulling from an older version of the database as it updates.

both of your assumptions are essentially correct:
A) the cartridges used that contain the wax can only be used because they have a rfid tag

B) even if we could reuse cartridges we'd still have to clean and purify the used wax due to becoming contaminated with the acyclic material during printing. We're currently not able to do this theoretical process.

Both we're looking into solutions for because for obvious reasons recycling wax would be good.

admin did notice but we're handling these issues privately, thanks