And days ago the blog had an article about SLS, EOS, lots of prints... trapdoor of truth opened and HP system "fell" to the cesspit of despair?
I just saw the price jump. NOPE! This material was amazing and was going to use the HP for my parts. Unfortunately, this price makes it completely unrealistic. As per HP, the cleaning of the parts would be easier and the powder reusable. I know there is some issues with reusing the powder. I do not see any justification for the overly dramatic price jump.
See, that's where I'm puzzled -- if the powder was twice as expensive (or half as easy to reuse) as WSF, you'd expect to see the material and machine space prices doubled (as they are). But why is the handling cost $5 per part rather than $1.50? I thought HP even built a booth to make the parts cleaning and powder recycling easier? That's the same handling price as High-Definition Acrylate, where someone has to sit and remove all the support wires by hand with wire cutters; and twice as expensive as FUD, where they have to put the parts in a high-temperature oil bath, fish them out, and wash them off again.
There are machines avaliable for the SLS systems that help with cleaning and recycling. Some printers can even be feed via fixed pipes. HP doesn't seem to have an advantage there, just a prettier looking booth.
And the weeks roll by... I would like to know: Does Shapeways intend to adjust the pricing to put the HP materials more in line with WSF, or should I start looking to competitors to see if they can do better? When will Shapeways make this material available to end-customers? We've been in trial-mode for a long time.
Did a few prints early on... customer came back, asked for some more, I saw the price and was all like
With the price hike, I'm not sure what the point is. It's twice as much for a minor improvement in print quality. I've stopped ordering it for myself because the price hike makes detail prints far more appealing, and since it doesn't seem to be going live anytime soon for selling I have no reason to order parts to test because my customers can't use it yet. If some of the other promised features were there, the full color, for instance, the new price might be something I could work with. The material is too expensive for large items, where the toughness really plays in. If it were reasonably priced, my hobbiest collector base would eat it up.