Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Radial, Thanks.

Sonic_Sun,

Thanks for the radial arrangement.

And Others,

Also here is the right-side down roof render after a turn:


All the best,
Charles Sloane

Don't forget though that even with these tricks they don't guarantee print orientation, as we've been told that until the tool is available the parts will be orientated to reduce cost but that the engineer will be free to change the orientation,

Mark

Roll-out Should Have Been Better

Well, that throws a monkey in the wrench....

It would have been nice to have a little time to prepare for the change in pricing and have a test system to work with for a month?? Maybe I did not get get notice because I have not opened my store yet. If I had opened my store and this was sprung on me like this it would really hurt!!

The first problem I had was not trying to get things face up (a new capability anyway), but dealing with a big price increase for my four part small N Scale station; in old print form just 2.043 x / 2.298 y / 1.946 z inches of space. The print price went from $35.65 to $44.87. Looking at the cost break down, the new price was 46.2% machine space. This is because of the empty space above three parts that are short but now all the space above them counts based on the tallest part.


Figure 1 is my already expensive $36 station becoming a $45 station, ouch!!! Then it took some time to understand what was happening, and I found out that if I load each part as a separate model (+ $2.50 each) I could lower the price to about $34. But anyway, I am still fixing the model, much more painful that adding handles and flags. The idea of setting the model up-side during printing and the potential for lower prices is nice. But it requires learning new arrangements of models and their parts.

I believe, perhaps, it would have been nice to have a month on a test system to adjust the model drawing arrangements to make best use of the pricing. This would also be to Shapeways advantage, since rearranged models make better use of the printer resources.

As it was it has been a terrible shock!!

The future awaits us....
Charles Sloane

Just getting caught up here...

I've seen a reduction in price of several of my models, which takes them from curiosities to viable products in many cases. So that's good news.

But the default orientation of some parts I've just recently designed is not working for me. Yes, it's the old bathtub vs. inverted bathtub orientation issue, so I knew going in I'd probably have to tweak the model to get it to print the way I want. I'm caught between waiting for the orientation tool to become available and just redesigning the part to get to print correctly.

What I find irritating about this is the fact that what are obviously detailed surfaces to anyone looking at the model are covered in support material and will print with poor detail and surface irregularities is an immutable fact of nature that seems never to be accommodated. I'm happy to pay extra for the detail. Just give me the tools to make that decision or get technicians who can recognize a detailed model surface vs. an undetailed reverse surface.

Need any stories of irate customers, who bought high and now the item is low?

I have a large item in Frosted Detail, which was repriced from $313 to $247, wow!
But I also have an irate customer who bought at $313 and now sees the new price...all I could do was suggest an email to service@shapeways.com

Indeed - but I prefer when it isn't down a dark alley, clutching a baseball bat...

Short and Tall Parts Don't Mix Well

Ryan,

I looked at your models just a bit and found a caboose, so I did a little experiment of my own, just a couple images for now, more later. The way I have this model drawn, when printed the right way, has the same problem my Hay Street Station originally had. More later.




Print the short walls and roofs with the tall cupola walls causes a lot of pay-for empty space above the walls etc. Almost half the cost of the model printed this way is machine space.

More later,
Charles Sloane

PS, The Cost Vs. Maximum Model Height Charted Out

If I got it right this is what the cost of our models look like based on the maximum height.


All the best,
Charles Sloane

OK, a question on support material:

I laid out the part below fairly low and flat, and the expected orientation was chosen by Shapeways. I saw that I still have a lot of support material. Finding that I could visualize the part and footprint without the support material, I did so... and see that the lowest part of my model is still floating above the build plane by a good bit.

Why? This can add a lot of support material!

Parts with support wax:



With footprint, w/o support... part is floating well above the build plane:

The 2.8mm Base Layer Support Wax Material

Patmat2350,

I believe that is the 2.8mm base layer the printer applies for everything it prints. I don't believe I have seen the technical purpose for that posted. Perhaps one of the Shapeways guys can give us the technical details (I am an Electrical Engineer I like technical details...).

All the best,
Charles Sloane

Much earlier in the thread, it was explained that the base support is a recommended practice from the Machine manufacturer the Shapeways employs. It was not mentioned however if Shapeways has experimented in reducing this base layer without print quality issues.

Ahh, thanks. It was not clear that this was embedded in the printing software.

@Patmat, your handwheels have a shaft coming out the bottom. If you could move this shaft to whatever the wheels attach to, and just have a socket on the back of the wheel, you could reduce their height and support material. The new pricing model is definitely driving us towards the multi-part "plastic model" school of thought...

@AlanHudson, This is so difficult to believe Alan, or understand! EVERYTHING affecting price will be visited multiple time as a designer finalizes a design. I am DESPERATE for the orientation tool BUT BEFORE THAT how about speeding up the support material visualization - it times out for most of my models before I even see anything! When can I expect to see an improvement?

Another frosted ultra "detail" parts set that a good Customer received with rough surfaced parts.

Suposedly, the parts were rightly oriented as in the preview, but half of them were clearly wrong oriented.

Shapeways will refund or reprint these at his own cost AGAIN.

This isn't a good reason to FINALLY MAKE THE THINGS RIGHT?

WHEN WE HAVE THE PROMISHED ORIENTATING TOOL?

When looking at this product you will see that it has 15 parts, however the support material preview only shows three of the 15. Why is the preview only showing three of the parts?

https://www.shapeways.com/product/4...-n-scale?key=d5c4fcb04e07635d3a8dc9de803cf62c

If I recall correctly, it was mentioned earlier that at most three parts are shown in the support material view. I guess this is for speed. Also I don't think it matters much as my understanding was orientation is set for the entire file in one go, so as long as you know the orientation of one part you know the orientation of the others, although I agree it would be useful to see them all,

Mark