Announcing Materials Updates

Adding a techno-loss to the list of changes...

Now that ceramic is gone so is the ability to thicken thinner models to porcelain thickness. As far as I can tell the most thickening that can be done is to use the aluminum thickener that goes to 1.5 mm.

If there were a good, free wall thickener software package out there I'd use that but I haven't seen anything as useful as the Shapeways wall thickener tool. I've mentioned it before but it would be great if Shapeways could open up the tool on the site to thicken to arbitrary thicknesses settings. Even for existing materials I would prefer to thicken to something slightly in excess of minimum values at time, perhaps with a 20 to 50% increase depending on the model. The only way to work around the issue now is to alternately play with scaling values and an available wall thickener in a specific material to eventually get to a final size model with a non-standard desired wall thickness.

This is one of those derivative impacted process changes that affects users. Everyone here self-generates various work flows to utilize features or overcome known deficiencies. But when quick changes are made that Shapeways might consider trivial there can often be a cascade of effects that throws everyone into turmoil.

Ehm.....I noticed a customer just ordered a design of mine in Black High Definition Acrylate.........how is this possible ?

Yeah, I don't sell on here anymore as my products are highly detailed 1/18 scale items and I hated getting angry messages from customers over FUD quality. I just used them from cheap prototypes UNTIL I got my hands on that wonderful Black Acrylate. Now it's gone. I guess I'm done.

I'm about 1/8th of the way through Shapeways proofing my product descriptions to the best of my ability, except for adjusting uploaded photo captions (just in case they decide to change the material names again).

I have been working with Shapeways for years now, and have purchased thousands of dollars of prints - all of them porcelain. I have spoken to you folks several times over the years (as I wanted to be sure that my burgeoning Piscepipes business had a reliable source), and you have called me a "Partner".

This isn't how you treat a "Partner".

I will not do business with your company again until you bring back Porcelain or a similar ceramic. You've lost me as a customer otherwise.

I think we all expect Shapeways to continue to innovate and improve. It would just be nice if you understood the impact on us designers/shop owners and made some proactive efforts to help us plan for and mitigate the impacts of those efforts.

Omg I was just getting a shop together and now I'm disgusted with Shapeways. I use competitive service too and even though they are more expensive I will move my store to them. It's not worth the headaches I've gone through with Shapeways. I have spent a LOT of money with over 50 models and printing multiples of most of them. The new CEO is not the sharpest. This was no doubt done to supposedly save money, but not if you loose regular paying 'PARTNERS'. I didn't even get an email about this.
This is the last straw. Thank god I haven"t opened my store yet and don't have to apologize to customers because the rug has been pulled out from under me.
I feel badly for those shop owners that have just been totally screwed.

Shopowner tip for the future.

If you don't want your product pages, particularly variant product pages, obliterated in the future don't only select a material such as porcelain options for which the product was designed. If this material gets removed then you'll have some work to do to recover the product page settings and convert over to other material(s). What can prevent this from happening is including another material or two that likely won't be removed as a material option, such as regular white plastic.

I'm going to assume Shapeways doesn't give a shit because of long lack of response.

That might work, but it's ludicrous. Shapeways shop owners should not need to have the built in assumption that materials will be removed without warning. Shapeways as a business can do what they want, all I ask for is a warning. That's not too much.

I'm just reporting things as I'm repairing my shop. Prepare for the future and Shapeways proof your shops as much as possible!

I have less problem with the sudden dropping of materials for sale as opposed to also doing it in a way that mucked up shops. There might be a good technical reason but it seems as though it would have been better to write some code that would prevent the sale of discontinued materials as opposed to wiping the information for those materials from all the databases on short notice. A warning that a complete wiping would happen in a month or two would have made it easier to fix up the shop product pages and activate other materials or redesign certain items for other materials.

Hi folks, I'm a little late to the party, but I just discovered another troubling change in the Silver composition, from 92.5% silver, 7.5 % copper to " 93% silver, 4% copper, 3% zinc". That change makes it impossible to apply vitreous enamel to the jewelry. (Zinc leads to explosive pitting in the enamel.) I am waiting to hear if I can order zinc-free silver in the future.

Also, the dropping of the maker material casting wax means I can't even get a wax model from Shapeways.

This is interesting, thanks for pointing it out. I'm sorry that you won't be able to enamel your pieces any longer. Do you happen to know if the addition of zinc slows tarnishing? That would be a nice benefit if true.

Hi Ontogenie, fine silver (.999) is the best silver for enameling with transparent colors (the style I do), you get stunning colors and no oxidation during kiln firings; but fine silver is relatively soft. Shapeways used to provide the second best choice: sterling silver with no zinc. I depletion gilded the pieces by repeated firings at 1200 degrees, then pickling between firings. After about three cycles you have a layer of fine silver on the surface, ready for enameling. I have several other vendor choices, so I'll talk with them. Best Wishes, Lawrence

I found another mess up in the materials transition, kind of sort of, since I was doing something in a non standard, non Shapeways authorized way in the first place. But it always seemed to me that we should be able to sell our own CustomMakered files as a courtesy to less tech savvy customers who were having trouble using the tool, or when temporarily modifying customization parameters for a certain customer.

I had some guitar picks (from my own CustomMaker based product) I personalized using CustomMaker and at the time was able to edit the CustomMaker generated product and convert it into a product with a mark-up. It was a little hosed up but it was visible and sellable in my shop; even though it was appended to the end of the shop and could not be display ordered like a regular product.

It turns out the item is still in my shop but now it has an invalid link which provides a blank page. It's also impossible to edit the product now, for example to disable the product or do anything else. I think this is the result of the material option codes changing in the latest transition. In other words red SF seems to have had a material code of optionId=60839364 and now the versatile red plastic whatever is optionId=21100217. If you change the material code in the old address to the new one the selling page does indeed appear. Here's an image capture of my shop that shows the product at the end of my shop.



Defective link in store:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/9...style-0001-1-4mm-engrave-3x?optionId=60839364

Corrected link with revised material code:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/9...style-0001-1-4mm-engrave-3x?optionId=21100217

(Alternately removing the material code completely brings up the page as well.)

Another interesting link is the one from the original order status page which has a different option ID but also leads to a blank white page:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/49BGWWRLQ?optionId=59542102&li=ostatus

As I recall that final link from the order status page was the link that provided an edit button that allowed me to set the CustomMakered files as public and for sale. Again removing the material option id from that last link brings up a visible page, but without a product edit button.

Another interesting tidbit is that I can't find valid links for any old CustomMakered products on my older order status pages. They all bring up a blank white page, readable by removing material option, but non-editable. That also means there's also no way to download Customakered geometry files and upload them to new virginal model/product page pairs. I'm not even sure if those items can be re-ordered from the old order status pages. As of now I have not tried reordering an old customized model. Someone might want to check on that.


So my basic problem is that this is now an orphaned, uneditable product. I think that all I could do at this point is to delete the model and maybe that will delete the model and the product in my shop. However I don't want to delete the model nor do I want to make things worse in my shop. Is there a fix or a simple work around to the problem that I'm not seeing?

That's the part that drives me nuts. They still print in wax as a part of the cast metals process. They simply will no longer ship it.

I was on the threshold of working with a local jeweler to make a wedding ring for my partner. I was intending to cast in an alloy not offered by Shapeways. I was willing to accept the risk of damage in shipping (which had yet to occur with previous prints) and perhaps have to make multiple attempts.Had I had notice, I might have been able to push though under the deadline. Now I'm left flapping in the breeze.

And sadly no more $30 custom cupcake candles for drloris.
https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/the-tower-candle.40713/

Heh, yeah.
I suppose that means that if no-one else did similar, the one I printed might be the only 'truely' 3D printed candle ever.

They ruined our entire spring jewelry collection. 6 day notice is a huge middle finger to those of us that generate lots of orders for them. I'm not designing a product around Shapeways ever again. I can't be left out in the cold like this. I HAVE CUSTOMERS TOO. Luckily we had just finished fulfilling our largest order for the season, but we could EASILY have been ruined by this snap decision.

"Metallic Plastic (instead try our Gray HP Nylon plastic)"

Well, okay, Shapeways, I decided to try your Gray HP Nylon--er, Professional Plastic.



That's Polished Metallic on the left, for comparison. I offered that material primarily for its looks, and the suggested substitute--which costs five bucks more, I should mention--looks like it has a really unpleasant rash.