Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Since you asked the question, assuming they are making too little profit to keep the machines running, or even losing money, then 0 prints is better than 100 prints.

Of course pricing in the real world also depends on what the competition is doing. You just need to be a little better and a little faster and a little cheaper than the other guy.

So what other "competition" with the same business model i.e. shops with markup, is out there?

Whoa, what? If we're already having to pay for this wax, then why would trying to lay a model out flat be advantageous to us, unless the bizarre z-axis pricing makes it so (where did the 1.45 exponent come from, anyway?)?

Which is far too late and absolutely ensures that there will be chaos, disappointed customers, and loss of sales. Listen, here is what I was taught in the Army: a higher command level should only take one-third of the available time to solidify its own plan and issue it to subordinate command levels, because the subordinate commands will need the remaining two-thirds of the time to assess, integrate, and implement their own plans. What SW should have learned after the S&F nylon debacle was that you should have given shop owners the visualization and pricing tools well before the planned implementation date so that we could begin revising our models to ensure we lose as little business as possible.

Seriously, why didn't you learn from what happened last time?

I analyzed my price changes (610 products) and 70% of prices go down by an average 28%. The remaining 30% has an average price rise of 47% Of the items that go up in price I think I can fix most of them with a sprue. Yes that's a lot of work, and the products are "first to try" again, and I will get new rejections probably. But your statement that most models go up in price is not correct in my case.

Your Caution Lights can be placed in a jig, not attached to a sprue. (they are cool by the way, with an LED inserted)
Make a sprue with small sticks upright, and place the caution lights over the sticks, the stick is where the LED would fit, just keep 0.05mm clear on all sides. Then make a retaining beam over the top of the light units, again not touching. You could try to fit something just barely over the edge of the lights so you don't get support material between the lights and the retaining beam. It's a bit like how I package my N scale traffic lights (mine is cruder than yours would be). I think this solution is not very difficult and will save a lot of money.

Remember that in your current model some poor Shapeways employee will have to pick up every single one of your caution lights, check them, and count them before they drop them in a plastic bag. It's a lot of work for them.

One of these "poor" Shapeways employees, just canceled the production of a scale model miniature today (because "thin walls"). He/she had the nerve to advise me to increase the wall thickness above 0.30mm into a build where ALL walls are already above 0.60mm! I offered myself to buy him/her a pair of glasses because obviously he/she has a serious purblindness problem... Long story short? Sale is lost due to the inadequacy of the "poor" Shapeways employee.

How did you analyze the price of your models? Tool?
How did you calculate the support? Tool?

Andrewsimonthomas already explained how into THIS post. IMHO don't bother to try, since they will not answer. Already tried and still have no news from Shapeways since last week. I can think of two possible reasons:

• They don't have enough time & personnel to prepare a price analyze for anyone - not even for the profitable shops who sell much and bring them much income,

• They just don't take the time to analyze any more shop requests - after all, it is more convenient to wait until May 22nd and surpise us with their pricing policy Armagedon.

shapeways has announced 70% of the FUD/FXD designs will be cheaper with the new ("improved") price model.

Why do they not show the new price to the designer - they have not the man power to calculate the new prices for the shops... But they claim that 70% will be cheaper...

IMHO - it will end up in the same desaster like the nylon improvment - only the price was improved nothing else...

To continue with the clever decisions to make our shops more diverse and profitable, I think the next step in Shapeways "Awesome Changes!" is to let us to sell only the products we have already test printed.

Then, when we were oblied to rework almost all our products as we go to do next week, we have to order all them again!
Easy money, as somebody says, "Win, Win!,... and Win again!"

A good adaptation of the name also would be nice. My proposal is "i.shapewayse"

You mean you sell products you haven't test printed yourself? Personally I think that's outrageous. I only ever put on sale items I've test printed (some may list first to try because of a minor tweak made after a test print) so that I can physically check them over before expecting anyone else to buy them. Yes this pushes up my costs but it's the morally right way of doing business and I wouldn't have a problem with shapeways making a test print a requirement for public sales; it would also remove all the dross that accumulates on the shop pages that no one in their right mind would ever buy,

Mark

Dear Mark,

Get real. I think HOLDEN8702 is absolutely right. To give you a simple example: A couple of weeks ago, we received a request from a customer who would like to produce a custom scale model kit - a real big one actually - with production cost over $2K for FUD 3D printing. Did you expect from our team to test print a $2K worthing object, paid from our own budget just to check if everything is OK? Hell no! As long as everything looks OK under digital inspection and after all manual checks performed by Shapeways techicians, there is no need for test prints. So, IMHO it's better to keep your "...I think that's outrageous..." comments for other issues rather than the way all shops are operating here. After all - in case you didn't know that - Shapeways ensures and guarantees that as long as technicians signal the green light for a "3D printable" model uploaded, there is no problem about producing it as a real-life object.

Regards,
Anyuta 3D

Ah, but there is a big difference between a custom model, designed for a single customer, to items on general sale. With the custom model, either you'd order it, check it and then sell it to your customer or you'd keep it private and share the shapeways item page with the customer so only they could order. Either route there would be okay without a test print as in the first you'd be able to check and deal with shapeways should any printing issues occur, and in the second you would make it clear to the customer that as a custom item it hadn't been test printed.

As for the "no problem producing it as a real-life object" comment that's great. But that only guarantees that the print matches your model file, it doesn't guarantee that your multi-part model will actually fit together properly. You can test that all you like in the virtual world, but with material tolerances and maybe other parts you need to add (wheels are a common one in model railways) the only way to be sure is to print and test assemble.

My point was really aimed at the models people put on general sale without testing. I've seen numerous models with descriptions that say "this should work but hasn't been tested", sorry but that's not the way to run a business, and no one in their right mind should be buying those models.

Mark

Dear Mark,

Most shops are focused on small and single-piece items - that is why Shapeways employees announced that in most cases, prices will drop.

On the other hand I need to agree that shops mostly oriented into more complex multi-items model kits (like our Anyuta 3D team does) should have an idea if and how the 3D printed individual kit parts could later become a nice assempled miniature. So, far having already sold hundreds of multi-parts scale model kits (in some cases each model kit may consist of 40, 50 or 60 parts), we received positive answers from our customers and thanks God we had no complaints (so far) for assembly difficulties. Ofcourse, for such multi-parts and high cost scale models kits (example HERE), we always perform our test building before and publish detailed pictures of the assembly progress and final result (example HERE and HERE with detailed instructions HERE), but as you understand having a catalog of hundreds available items for sale, it is not possible to test print every tiny single-piece item, especialy when it is absolutely sure that will have no problem to get 3D printed or fit on customer's expectations.

Long story short? Yes, multi-parts model kits should be test printed before customers apply orders, but do not expect from us to test print THIS single-piece product (which btw turned to be one of our best sellers) before release it on Shapeways gallery for sale.

Regards,
Anyuta 3D

Your approach seems like a nice middle ground between printing everything and printing nothing, and I'd be happier if more modellers adopted a similar approach.

I still have an issue, to some extent, even with single part prints. Yes if they are never going to be assembled in any way (even no none printed parts) then in theory they should come out perfect every time and shouldn't need a test print. However, experience shows this isn't the case. I have a number of models ready to put on sale, but because I couldn't guarantee the print orientation I haven't as my test prints were horrid due to the weird orientation chosen on multiple occasions. Hopefully with the new pricing that issue should go away, but without a test print I would have been subjecting my customers to horrible, and frankly useless, models and as designers I don't think we should do that; it certainly isn't good for our brand if we do,

Mark

People, maybe we should start a different topic on selling or not selling untested items?
Then we can also discuss the material choices some sellers dare to offer and seller/designer responsibility in general.

I actually understand that Shapeways is changing some of the rules, it is a shame it is being done though pricing. Other options were available. As an example, the number of small separate parts could have been limited (and enforced). Forcing this through pricing is unnecessary IMHO.*
Any way, looking at some designers, I know they have been taking full advantage of a lack of rules, perhaps to the extreme. This has continued for many years and it was fun while it lasted. I can imagine the time has come for Shapeways to find a new balance. Perhaps we should look at ourselves as well, at least a little.

The real problem at this point is that we, the designers, still don't know how the new pricing rules will affect our designs. We have not been able to prepare for this at all! I find this unacceptable.
The second problems is that we again have to invest in models by redesigning them. And we also all know how vulnerable new/re-designs in scale models are for rejections..... so there will be trouble, which will cost us money.

Still we all knew very well that we are vulnerable to new rules from Shapeways. For those who do this professionally it might be a good idea to look for ways to decrease your dependency on Shapeways. That's also a matter of running a business. Of course small companies do not always have that option, but at some point you may have to invest in something other than designs. There are very good affordable printers on the market....




* I've done models with hundreds of parts, so adding sprues is something I've been doing for a long time. It was also a way of controlling the quality of all parts for the customers, something a lot of designers to not seem to care about. With the new rules, directionality should no longer an issue, so it would make sprues less interesting for designers. I get why Shapeways needs to counter that development. Still, I do think $1 per part is too excessive. Why not set a max number of parts (including min. size) and have people pay if they go byond those rules?

Mark, a succesful test print does not mean the design will always be printed that way. I've seen product photos from customers that do not meet the quality of the test prints at all. However, customer service has always stepped up and fixed it. It is also about educating your customers. In the early years I used the product pages to explain everything to the customers. By now people seem to be more aware of what quality to expect, so they better understand if the quality isn't there and they can take action themselves.

I'm glad Shapeways is no longer trying to minimize the footprint of a design. This has been the main reason for directionality issues on my orders. Minimizing the height of a print is something that's much easier to deal with.

I'm trying to understand why so many folks think that somehow the shop owners are beholden to SW for everything. The way I see it SW is a supplier to us. Shop owners are the businesses and as a supplier, SW has the obligation to make quality prints/castings.etc. Shop owners do have an obligation to SW to make our designs printable to their manufacturing requirements (which are unclear at best, i.e. 0.03 min wall should be 0.30 acceptable). It is no different than in the "real: manufacturing industry.

After all, we do pay them a percentage of our prints.

SW created this business model and promised all of us that they would be able to make our designs for us to sell to the public, provided they are printable of course. I am grateful for this, but it was not the shop owners that created the business model.

In reality, SW has two customers, the Shops and the paying buyer.

I also think that nearly all of the typical design print rejections can be fully automated, such as wire cross section/length, detail height, part to part clearance, escape holes and interlocking parts. This would help to eliminate the seemingly subjective reassessment of the designs being rejected by some and accepted by others. This would go much farther in ensuring quality first-time throughput.

I design my parts as kits so my customers can sand and finish the parts prior to assembly, with flat and smooth surface where possible, and with mostly detail-free surfaces where the details are added as a separate part later so they do not get broken off the main part. This also lessens the chance of support wax damaging the surfaces of the parts I care about in the design, but because the techs have the ability to reorient the parts, it sometimes negates this.

I do wish that they had solicited impact from more of us that have multi-part kits so that we had time to lessen the impact or possibly help them develop an alternative to an overbearing price gouge (IMHO a veiled way to eliminate multi-part models) for those of us who prefer kits for the reasons stated above.

Cages and sprues are just expensive waste material to end up in a landfill, not to mention the possibility of the customer damaging an already fragile part by trying to snip, cut or break it off a sprue or out of a cage.

Part of the beauty of the RP process is being able to create these tiny and/or delicate free-forms that would otherwise be impossible to make by hand.

Design Engineering is a process of change, and while we all wanted the current practices to continue, SW felt that some of the practices were more than they could bear.

Let's just say I am very worried/disappointed and I sincerely hope I can redesign my models to keep their original integrity.

I can offer one alternative and that is to allow shop owners the ability to "kit" separate, single part models of like materials so the single-model concept remains, but the shop owner can control all of the parts in that kit (and in some cases the orientation) under one "Kitting setup" fee which could be a reasonable premium applied to the normal setup fee to help alleviate the costs/risks during the collection and post processing of the parts in the kit after printing.

Again a key problen with sprues on small models is that the rigid sprue rule will require sprues to be multitude of times larger than the model's features, and cages even more so with the added issue of major covering of wax on model due to the locking requirements. Unless sprues and cage.thickness can be reduced to at most 0.7mm with the smallest models, small parts will be printed with a much larger cage and have mostly ruined surfaces.

It happens to me that the entire idea of 1USD per part fee is to attempt to remove sets of multiple small parts altogether. So I dont think they'll be willing to bring it back at any premium less.

That was meant sarcastically of course...
I think most of us here have had rejections with which we did not agree. It is absolutely frustrating. I am now sprueing a lot of models and I dread my mailbox in the coming weeks since there are bound to be rejections. I hope that the checkers will be lenient and when there's doubt they will print it. [/happy_hopeful_mode]

I used the csv file I got from SW. I crossreferenced it with my sales and pricing csv-files to see how many times I had sold a particular model. With that information I prioritized which models should be adapted, which would be kept unchanged and which wouldn't be worth the trouble.
217 models are scheduled for change, or at least a review to see what I could change. With 10 minutes per model it would take 36 hours...
The bright side: I did an in-depth analysis of my shop contents and even came up with a few new things.

I am a proponent of printing stuff before you sell it. However the i.shapewayse variant would probably drive me away. Either I don't ask enough markup, or I don't sell enough but that wouldn't be worth it for me.