Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by Andrewsimonthomas, May 9, 2017.

  1. DistrictX
    DistrictX Member
    indeed! shapeways announced that new prices result 70% of products printed in fud will become cheaper, 10% will remain same and 20% will become more expensive

    according to what said to far, the 70% to become cheaper are actually small and low cost products that cannot bring much profit for shapeways and the 20% are big sized and more expensive that could potentialy bring more profit.

    shapeways had the briliant idea to support 70 sellers and earn $1 of each one of them (total profit $70) than support 20 sellers and earn $50 from each one of them (total profit $1000). great economy lessons!
     
    MathoModels likes this.
  2. barkingdigger
    barkingdigger Well-Known Member
    Ah - got it! But still only one of my old models so far has finished "processing" in the 3D Tools view so I can look at the support material! Mostly the support material option has a spinning circle of despair long after the rest get green ticks, and eventually I get the dreaded "Your model has taken more than 60 seconds to process - GO AWAY!" (ok, paraphrased just a little...) I suppose in the weeks to come, as server traffic dies down again, I might be able to get my models to finish loading enough to see the wax support view...

    Oh, and best of luck on those stunning airships! Sadly the new pricing model seems to favour small & compact models while penalizing anything big or hollow. And curved things require a ton of expensive wax regardless of what way round you position them.
     
  3. Ngineer
    Ngineer Well-Known Member
    There are two ways to go about this: moan and look for alternatives, or find optimizations in your designs to give your customers the best value for money. In this case I chose the latter and yes it took a lot of time but now at least 85% of my models have gone down in price.

    Of course, there is a third alternative: buy your own printer and resin etc, redesign the models for that printer, lose a lot of time in experimentation, set up your own shop, buy a bunch of boxes and bags and ship everything yourself and during your spare time answer all the questions from customers. Now see how much you value your own time and how much your models will cost. It's cheaper in production but also involves a lot more work.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2017
    MelangeToys likes this.
  4. DistrictX
    DistrictX Member
    your models are small, only few mm long and let me guess with low cost and low markup fee per item. therefore, your models are not much affected by new pricing changes .

    i assume you are into 70% target group of sellers that shapeways prefer to earn only few bucks. on the other hand there is also the 20% target group of sellers with biger sized models and markups that can reach (due size and complexity) up to $50, $100 per item, resulting more expensive purchase price for buyers and bigger profit for shapeways. as said previously , shapeways decided as better idea to earn $1 x 70 times than earning $50 x 20 times .

    keep in mind that no matter what the 20% target group of sellers with biger sized models do, no matter on how they orient models, no matter if items are single-piece or multi-piece, the production cost cannot be possibly reduced. i read about people here complaining for extremely high prices and i guess that they do not just arguing for fun . i believe that they have reasons to be unhappy and i am sure that if there was a possible way to make their products more cheap, they surely would.

    frustration is not because they do not like to reduce prices. frustration is because the 20% of sellers cannot reduce prices.
     
  5. czhunter
    czhunter Well-Known Member
    Derek66> What about HDA material? Now it is for bigger single part models (15-20 cm) usually much cheaper then FUD (for all my H0 train models it is).
    And your airship (ZPG-3) fits into the bounding box ...

    DistrictX> What about an idea, that neither Shapeways is bad, or designers are bad, but only FUD material - its properties and processing - is bad for building big models?
    Maybe its not becaude Shapeways hates designers making bigger more complex models with bigger markups, but just forces them to use different material ...
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2017
  6. DistrictX
    DistrictX Member
    which is?
     
  7. ETS35
    ETS35 Well-Known Member
    Having seen the printers in action, I did not get the impression an entire X-Y layer is printed in a single step. I seemed much closer to your average inkjet printer you have at home. Maybe I I misinterpreted, but I don't think I did...
     
  8. HOLDEN8702
    HOLDEN8702 Well-Known Member
    KIDDING?

    I've reworked an small parts set, carefully moving the parts to be printed in a flat shape and with the theorically ugly face backwards, but the support material preview shows that!

    As shapeways said before, the models were been cheaper as the height is lower, then WHY IN THE HELL auto position converts a 2.6 mm. tall model into a 40.6 mm. tall model?

    IN MY COUNTRY THIS IS CALLED "ESTAFA", CHEATING, SWINDLE, RIP-OFF, FIDDLE, TRICK, ....
     

    Attached Files:

    tengel likes this.
  9. ETS35
    ETS35 Well-Known Member
    Lower is not necessarily cheaper. Machine volume is footprint x height (something). So it is possible the much smaller footprint compensates for the height. Apparently we need to wait until the orientation can be set bythe designers. In the mean time SW will supposedly print this with the best possible orientation for the lowest possible price.
    If SW keeps that promise, the problems will really start when designers get to control orientation....
     
  10. HOLDEN8702
    HOLDEN8702 Well-Known Member
    Yes, confirmed by shapeways that it's useless to rework our models cause the auto orienting tool will do it randomly, ruining all your work in orientating models to locate the "bad" side downwards.

    Till designers can control orientation, I can't work to fix any of my existent models.

    As usual, thanks to shapeways to do our work easiest day by day.
     
  11. czhunter
    czhunter Well-Known Member
    No, its not useless, it can significantly lower the price.
    Sometimes (for many small objects), sometimes not (for big single-piece objects).

    Of course you have to trust the engineers will NOT use the orientation "recommended" by Check tool.
    But trust is (not very popular for many) part of life.
     
  12. HOLDEN8702
    HOLDEN8702 Well-Known Member
    I'm not talking about price.

    I'm talking about to orientate model to have the better detail upwards and far from support material, and watch these faces are completely covered of it.
     
  13. czhunter
    czhunter Well-Known Member
    That is the same - you have no control, as you never had.

    At least, things are not getting worse, in this matter.

    It seems, that ignorance was bliss - when you had totally no idea, what is the best orientation for machine, you were not afraid of it.
     
    MitchellJetten likes this.
  14. tengel
    tengel Member
    Prices for FUD from Material page
    $2.50 handling fee
    $1.00 /part
    $0.75 /material cm3
    $0.38 /support cm3
    $0.09 /machine ((Footprint cm2) x (Height cm)1.25)

    Prices shown in the model page:
    [​IMG]

    Questions
    1$ per Part = 2,73€ ???? Today 1$ ~ 0,90€
    handling fee= labor ?
    per file = part?
    IMHO inconsitent and prices in Euro wrong on the model page!
     
  15. tengel
    tengel Member
    Wow - how to make money...
    A flat part with 6x9.0,43cm dimension is put upwards with 9cm height in the printer instead flat with 0,43cm height.
    This increases the machine volume price from 1,70$ to 3,62$ - more than 100%...
    Also, unnecessary support material is required.
    [​IMG]

    orientation in stl-file:
    [​IMG]

    ....
     
  16. sbhunterca
    sbhunterca Well-Known Member
    Remember that the model will be printed on a 3 mm. thick bed of support wax, not directly on the machine's platen. It's possible that huge rectangle of wax 3 mm thick would add more to the cost than the smaller amount of wax plus the height penalty would.

    Just guessing, of course.

    Steve Hunter

     
  17. tengel
    tengel Member
    My part has a 6x9cm flat area with some parts on one side and as an heigh of 0,43cm - Post #395
    Machine-Volume would be ((6x9)x(0,43^1,25))x0,09$ = 1,69$

    But shapeways put the part upward with 9cm height in the calculation:
    Machine-Volume would be ((6x043)x(9^1,25))x0,09$ = 3,62$ and also additional support material is required to print the parts on one side.

    IMHO it's strange - because shapeways has mentioned, the height of the model can cause problems during printing and this is one of the reasons for the height exponet of 1,25.
     
  18. TonyRR
    TonyRR Well-Known Member
    I've noticed that in some models you're charging me more for the support material than for the FUD...

    It's OK or it's a mistake?

    The model is correctly placed.
     
  19. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    Just pondering this placement thing...

    If a flatish thing, sort of like a credit card shaped model, is printed flat as opposed on edge, doesn't that mean it's likely that fewer models can be printed at one time in a printing cycle? As a result that would effectively mean more cost for every print in the batch, or less profit for Shapeways. On the other hand verticalness also adds cost due to more print time. But fundamentally couldn't printing something on edge be the equivalent of putting a 40mm hole in a large SF object to open up more space for more prints per batch?
     
  20. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    People were affraid. Otherwise no threads about bathtub vs standing would had been written over and over. Or requests for orientation control wouldn't had been made. Or reprints asked because the quality was poorest in the most important places.
    Many times prints were bathtub because it's cheaper. And the repricing is about paying for what is used. Do the maths. And put units. Saying "best" is like saying "42", instead of "best cost" or "42 mm".