Introducing Three Tough Sla Plastic Materials

SLA has been a long time coming here honestly but i really need to ask, why is the price so high per part, etc? This is something that we miniature guys have been waiting for but it is more then double the cost in FUD (yes, I know the old term)?

Brian

The material looks nice. The detailing is almost at FUD level. With a better and smoother appearance this material might be a good alternative. But the price: come on. Starting at $30 per part is really not in my reach.

I've have noticed with many many other shop owners that sales are going to zero. This material comes too late, and too expensive. And SW: it is time to admit that you have lost your USP!

Do we get charged "per part" on a multi-part model? Should we attach everything onto a sprue for these new materials? I'm mostly interested in the grey since I make miniatures/ scale models and I would like to offer larger models broken down into parts like your typical scale model tank etc.

Claudio

Glad to see you finally offer a clear SLA plastic, but minimum $30 per part? Good thing I bought a Duplicator D7 plus last night.....

Doesn't show up for existing models...

Okay. I'm not really feeling like doing trial and error on this (or anything, transparency please), so I'll ask this directly. What general size/volume/whatever is going to hit the upper-end of that $30 minimum?

For this to eventually be marketable to my audience, I'm going to need to be able to pack, six to eight of my standard items per print at that cost.

I have been waiting EAGERLY for a replacement for hi-def black acrylate and I was genuinely excited to read about these new materials, but with a $30 per part minimum price it just makes this another dead-end for the type of production I do. It would be the absolute PERFECT material for me to switch nearly all of my items to use if not for the price point. If $30 is truly the absolute basement price on this material then the only possible way this material can work for me is if you get a whole heck of a lot of material and machine volume for that $30 minimum. I could sprue and print large batches of my small items together for the $30 minimum and still be able to make some money by selling off-site. I wouldn't be able to use my Shapeways shop for direct ordering for my customers anymore, but at least I could order my own stock and sell it elsewhere myself. Failing that, I won't be able to use this material at all, really, which is quite a letdown.

Beyond those comments, I'll add a question or two also, if you would be so kind as to respond to them:

I know I read elsewhere that the hi-def black acrylate material was given the ol' "heave-ho" in no small part due to the labor costs of trimming the model supports away from each model. Without having access to see the material options (since this new material class is not appearing as an option on any of my models so far) I can't tell for myself. Is there a (much) cheaper option available where you folks just cut our model off of the big print platform "heap," UV cure it with supports in place, and then mail it to us as-is? That's as close to zero labor as it gets and I don't mind trimming my own supports if it makes this material actually economically viable to use. If no such option exists, is there a good technical reason that this nearly-zero-post-production option can't be offered to those who would value it, so that this material's price tag could be kept to a manageable size?

Honestly, if this sticker-shock-inducing minimum price is intentional to keep the riffraff (like me) out of your resin printer space, please just let us know that instead. I don't want to waste your time or mine by asking about things that will never be made to work for small-time, non-industrial, non-corporate users. I understand large-scale company prototyping is a market segment you want to capture now, I just want to know honestly where the rest of us stand.

Funny, I have a Formlabs Form2, and have ordered a Form3. My customers compare my parts I print for them to the FUD parts all the time, and they have found SLA printing finish superior to FUD, but the price per part is insane. They'll continue getting Form2 printed parts.

Are there any benchmarks for UV stability for these resins that are available for comparison?
It would be nice to know if there are redeeming archival properties in the material specifications, that would make this material choice appealing, --pricing structure aside...

crickets

Hey Folks! We've been really excited about this launch over here and I've been working on getting answers to some of your questions - my apologies that they weren't more timely

The biggest comment I see so far is in relation to the costs. Why do these materials have such a high minimum cost and what are you getting for that? Material volume is the biggest cost driver for these, and you'll get around 4.5cm^3 of material for the $30 minimums you're seeing ( @TrentTroop ). That's a ballpark estimate and doesn't include the other cost-driving components. This is about on par with other services that offer SLA in similar/the same materials throughout the market.

I can say pretty confidently that the Accura plastics are really beautiful - excellent for functional or industrial parts that require a lot of strength and rigidity (or transparency, in the case of Accura60). You may not find them to be as economically viable for many scale models in the way that FUD/Fine Detail Plastic is, but the materials serve different purposes due to their makeup properties, and won't always be interchangeable for that reason.

Regarding UV stability - let me check in with our physical product team on this and see if I can find out more.

Can there be an option for us to send you models with supports for a lower cost - we did offer this service when BHDA was still part of our portfolio, and to be candid, hadn't considered that option for this launch. That doesn't mean it's off the table completely, just that we haven't scoped out the possibilities or demand for it quite yet. Thanks for bringing this up, @rowsdower!

Apparently you haven't seen the prices in regards to FUD/Fine Detail Plastic outside of the minimums the price is seemingly slightly cheaper. i was wondering if the last few rounds of price hikes was to push people out of FUD/Fine Detail Plastic and into SLA. The launch was about a week too late to be useful in my latest order which is waiting "in production". So i'm not about to run out and order today.



As for the other commenters, it dosen't seem to take much to get over that $35 threshold.

Thank you EricaC for your reply... While I do agree that they FUD is much cheaper (about half the price of the SLA at least with my designs) I have received quotes from other printers for SLA that are actually cheaper that the current FUD prices by about $20 (in some cases more). For minatures, ie scale trains and scale modelers, SLA/Resin is what many want. But with these prices, they will not be getting from here... Real shame...

Brian

@EricaC Thank you for your reply. As I recall, the option for shipping the model with supports still attached (for BHDA) was the same price as the option to have the supports removed. (The wayback machine seems to support my fuzzy memory since the "with supports" column has no separate pricing.) If it wasn't the same exact price it was at least very nearly the same price - maybe there was a flat $1 or $2 for support removal at most? It's been a while but I know it was so close in price that I never had any reason to seriously consider removing my own supports back then. In either case, I would imagine the only people using that option when the price is the same (or very, very nearly so) would be people who wanted to make extra sure that the removal of support material was done "juuuust so" for whatever reason. Otherwise, the logical strategy is to spend the extra ($0 or $1 or $2?) and let some other poor soul spend the time and take the risk of damaging the model when you don't have to pay to replace it. It doesn't make any sense for a buyer to take on the work and the risk if the price does not reflect their taking on that additional burden. If you folks can give us a noticeable price reduction in exchange for shifting the most substantial and risky part of the direct labor into our hands then I think you would see some more movement into that option. Maybe restrict that "supports-attached" option to be a "maker material" (like it used to be for BHDA) if you don't think the general populace can/would handle it?

With respect to the strength of Accura plastics being better than that of FUD, and that they have different uses... I understand what you folks think we "should" use these materials for, but I can tell you for sure FUD is not a satisfactory material for me in actual practice for most of the things I would like to offer to my customers. I liked the detail that could be achieved with BHDA. It also had very good physical characteristics, similar to injection-molded ABS. I also like the detail that can be achieved with FUD. However, the primary, and utterly deal-killing reason I don't use FUD for most of my items is because it is so brittle.

As it is, ever since BHDA was retired I have basically stopped modeling anything that needs any fine detail. I really only build specifically for WSF these days for the strength and for the economy, but to the utter detriment of the fine detail which means there are certain entire categories of things I won't bother to design and sell. The Accura plastics seem to just head right to the sweet spot for high-detail-but-still-durable model making, which was what BHDA used to offer me. Sadly, I only discovered the true utility of BHDA a couple of months before it was dropped and I have been languishing in need of a replacement. That is why the Accura offerings are such the tempting carrot to have dangled in front of me, but only if the pricing can be made to work for what my market can bear. Cutting out the most significant direct labor seems like the most effective and simplest way to give us both what we want, so I do hope the team will give this some careful consideration and thorough discussion. I am available for further comment when the time comes!

It finally is starting to be available for my models .... and the ones best suited for it, well it's just too expensive. £125 for something I can have printed on a Form 2 for £30, and it will be delivered in half the time it takes Shapeways. It wouldn't be so bad if the minimum price actually got you a decent sized model, but at this level it prices anything reasonable out in the miniatures market. Anyone wishing to make use of the upper bounding box limit would have to have very deep pockets.

Well I like to be convinced. Can you please send a couple of kits (just pick the more popular once from my shop offered in FUD) printed in this SLA including a suggested cost price? I like to compare and judge by myself how good this new material actually is.

Thanks in advance,.
Maurice

Are there any sample kits available for all these new materials? The materials feel like unobtanium.

Trying to like Rail Scale's post I basically get "Am I sure I want to like this post" Erm....Y..E..S.....otherwise I wouldn't have clicked it, and if I clicked it by mistake usually on many platforms you just click it again to 'un' click it. Useless feature.


So err, yes, new materials, new materials. I'm interested and skeptical all at once.

As to our businesses, I've been printing things more and more on my Anycubic Photon as I and others have a chance of affording things from it! I brought it because I couldn't stand the last price rise and faff about, was the tipping point. Sales were dropping to not many so my hand was forced.

I'm still here and I still want to be but I'd also like to do more with Shapeways like I used to.

As was said ages ago though, SW wants to move into more large corporate type work so small timers get the cold shoulder it seems.....even though some of us helped build this place to begin with.