Introducing The Hp Printer! Sign Up For Early Access

Hi Stannum! It's not a secret - we just haven't worked out the exact incentive yet, but we'll be sharing it with those we're able to choose for this early access program. See my previous post on the photos question. No work is wasted, and I'm happy we're now meeting your expectations better. Designers are generally delighted to have their work promoted for free, so I'm glad that we've been able to overcome the past conditions you mention.

When changes make designs unprintable or too expensive to sell, they become wasted effort. Undefined incentives accessed after buying something else aren't motivating either.

So far HP's, the one with "lowest cost-per-part" in the leaflets, is 1 dollar more than WSF, while being in test phase. *shrug*

I signed up.

I like for my invertible, movable objects a stronger material (it should be). A wish for later are smaller clearances (<0.5mm) in teh design guide to move gears smoother. I hope to have soon a oportunity for the print of a first object.

I guess the community is reather eager to USE this new material, then TRY it.
That for me is the difference - "using" material is our job, "trying" material is your job.

Stannum> Even worse then repricing is changing the design guidelines after/during test phase. You prepare the model for testing the material, than SW changes the design guidelines and woohooo, you can do your work again!
It was visible when testing BHDA material - those who didn't participate in test, but waited for the final specification, saved their money (as not all prints were correct in the beginning - even when SW offered reprinting) and time (becuase they didn't have to rework their models as guidelines were changing).

I understand, that some people like trying new stuff, helping you (SW) do the bussiness better. I don't understand why they pay for it. But obviously - not my bussiness

Hi Angela,

Thank you very much for clarifying Shapeways position over the terms & conditions of the early access program. Am I correct to assume that Shapeways may provide third parties with images and printed parts for marketing & promotion, but will not provide such third parties with access to model owners 3D design data?

-Trygon

Hi @Trygon - that is correct!

@czhunter and @stannum The printer is performing very well, and I'm certain that you would be blown away by the overall quality if you were to try it, and our money back guarantee would apply if you weren't happy. But, I understand your desire to experience this material offering at a later state, and of course, we happily invite you to await the full release of the material, when all of the specs will be known and shared and permanent pricing will be known. We always have a period like this, a pilot or a beta period where our community of makers can access materials and help us refine our knowledge of the material. For this program, the incentive will apply to the models you order in the material, so I'm not sure what you mean by "after buying". If that's not for you, then no problem at all. The material will ultimately become available to all makers and shoppers.

Regarding any price delta vs. SWF: Independent of any processing cost differences at Shapeways, the product MAY be better than SWF, which supports a "value increase" to us:

- Surface detail capability: About the same

- Part strength and stiffness: TBD, but the filled nylon 12 may have improvements.

- Surface smoothness: HP says that the two applied "agents" (one for defining what is fused, the other for defining what is not fused), along with the precision of the sweeping spray bar as compared to a steered laser, should all combine to give more precisely defined surfaces with crisper edges and smoother texture. We'll see! But I'll note that my parts in SWF, with for example a true vertical wall, exhibit lines and stepping... assuming it wasn't because a truck drove by, I attribute the stepping to imprecision in where the laser steers in successive layers.

Anxious to give it a try...

I have signed up for the pilot program. I mainly print designs/models using SWF. I have a very strong interest in the new process. It may bring some small gains in detail definition over SWF but it will surely deliver a much improved surface finish when compared with SWF. I am sure that this smoother finish will greatly enhance the saleability of many of the models in my shop. In fact I've been designing with this new process in mind since the beginning of this year. I am hoping that the new process will soon become generally available and I'm looking forward to re-designing some previous models to take full advantage of the new process.

Thanks Shapeways for a user-friendly and cost-effective service, and very good customer relations.

Well, that's good that Shapeways will give our money back if not satisfied. I had to fight to get my money back once when trying Shapeways' full-color plastic trial. Shapeways did give my money back but only after debating the request with me.

I'm curious though about your quality statement. Isn't Shapeways' Strong & Flexible Plastic material printed at a higher layer resolution than what the MJF printer will currently be printing at? So in other words, is Shapeways' Strong & Flexible Plastic printed at a finer fidelity than what the MJF will currently be printing at?

I'm interested in layer resolution because my quadrapod cell phone case design does not work because the layer resolution of Shapeways' Strong & Flexible Plastic is not high enough.

UniverseBecoming - Thanks for your question.

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I think layer resolution needs to be considered within the wider context of design rules.



I have noticed that some shapes, even though dimensioned within the context of the SWF design rules, may fail the resolution test when converted to an stl file. The inevitable coarsening and associated tesselation can create artefacts that fall below the printer’s resolution capabilities. The coil spring in image 1 below fails with a wire diameter of 1.1mm but passes with a wire diameter of 1.15mm.



Where I think the HP-J printer will bring some resolution improvements over SWF is in surficial tolerances (i.e. “smoothness). Obviously so for planar surfaces, but also, I think, where planes join to make outside and inside corners. With SWF these meeting places usually come with a thicket of attached particles and a “saw” edge ridge. Sometimes these can be easily cleaned with a machinist’s de-burring tool, but often not. I’m looking forward to seeing an HP-J print and giving it the eye-ball test.



Image 2 shows the design for a skip wagon designed with the HP-J printer in mind. This was scaled from a photograph using the method I described here: https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=19176 . The realism of the model can only be enhanced by the smoother finish.

Will we be able to specify a vertical orientation direction?

The XY resolution of 1200dpi is about 4x smaller than the 0.1mm [0.004"] layer thickness...

Or are these both so tight as to not make a difference?

I just signed up. Since I sell a lot of sci-fi themed items, gray and black are in-demand colors, and more detail with S&F flexibility and cost will be a big advantage for me.

To answer my own question, I looked into it and found that Shapeways' Strong and Flexible Plastic prints at a layer resolution of 120 microns while Shapeways' HP Jet Fusion Plastic will be printed at 80 microns with the potential to go down to 70 microns in the future since the HP sales literature is quoting 70 ?m for their 4200 Printer. So, concerning print quality, the lower layer resolution combined with HP's detailing agent which works to define edges, will make the HP Jet Fusion Plastic a much more desirable material compare to the Strong and Flexible Plastic.

HP's sales literature states that the operating costs are about half that for the costs of SLS printing.

That means that Shapeways is most likely going to have to lower their price at some point to remain competitive.

They have lots of touch time costs so a cheaper print process may not lower the price very much. My guess is that they might establish a different pricing calculation scheme that's not directly comparable with SF or metallic plastics. For example the economics of a faster printer might let them drop the machine space calculation and go with simpler material volume pricing. Or they might invent a new pricing term to replace the machine space calculation. Maybe something called the "turbo mega high speed printer multiplier fee."

I'm still waiting on the "Order it Today.. receive it Yesterday" option.

Other places use different formulas for SLS than SW. In some cases, cheaper and way less of a headache for design limits (double adventage, or triple, as probably the company also runs into less inspection costs and print crashes).

Hi Universe Becoming,

I used much the same numbers as you quote to arrive at my conclusions regarding the new printer. The main gain from my point of view is the enhanced smoothness of the print. I rate SWF as an excellent material but, unfortunately, its granular surface combined with its porosity tend to give it a low MAF (modeller acceptance factor) when used for my purposes. I’m not looking for the sort of glassy smoothness of ABS, just an improvement in this regard over SWF. A less than dead smooth surface is quite acceptable, say the equivalent of sanded fine-grain wood.

I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about cheaper prints. It’s true that as manufacturing technologies mature unit costs tend to come down. But Shapeways, like any other business, faces both the normal overhead costs of doing business as well as the ancillary costs of machine operation. These latter are tied to a pre-production inspection and post-production process dominated by one order per piece rather than a single order of one piece for a long production run of many identical pieces.

Cheers,

Vailala

If the Shapeways clones lower their prices Shapeways will need to do the same to remain competitive. In the beginning years of Shapeways, Shapways was struggling with their pricing structure concerning SLS polyamide. Shapeways then made a huge move to rais the price for their SLS polyamide. This was very carefully thought out and even involved Shapeways' CEO posting a public message basically asking if anyone had any ideas for making the process more economical. Nothing was found so Shapeways created a pricing structure to account for the unsintered powder that was being highly degraded on every print run. This involved raising the price quite a bit and it was a disaster for countless designers that had created SLS polyamide based products in the previous price range.

Based on what I've seen over the years concerning the price of SLS polyamide between Shapeways and the Shapeways clone sites everyone is operating at minimal profits since if any of them could they would lower prices to gain more customers. Now we have HP stating that they can cut operating costs by one-half relative to SLS polyamide. Consequently, a battle will ensue over gaining customers by cutting costs.

Currently, Shapeways' price is:

HP Jet Fusion Plastic
$2.50/part
$0.28/material cm3
$0.21/machine cm3

Strong & Flexible Plastic in Black
$2.50/part
$0.28/material cm3
$0.21/machine cm3

Exactly the same. The price is going to come down for HP Jet Fusion Plastic when the other Shapeways clones come online with their HP Jet Fusion Plastic offerings at lower prices because they are going to have room to do so. Why are they going to have room to do so? Becuase HP is saying they've managed to cut the cost by half relative to SLS polyamide.

Mark my words, the price is going to go down!

How do we know when we get access to the process? I have designs ready to roll!