Road To Major Fud Improvements Starts With Repricing

Doesn't almost everyone do this type of thing? It reduces the risk of losing money on a product until metrics are better established. And new "things" can generally charge a premium price until competition runs rampant. Exceptions include the areas of commodity products like oil, potash, or corn. There's a market price and that's what you get. But a commodity item is more of a known in terms of expected production/delivery costs. When it comes to something like using a new 3D printer in a high volume production environment costs become a bigger unknown. For a new 3D printer there are lots of unknowns in terms of longer term down time or production quality/repeatability. Having said this I hope HP 3D prints become a commodity product and are eventually 1/4 of what they are today.

Simply rotating the model prevents Shapeways from orienting it on edge? That's easy to do. I'll give that a whirl.

Charles,

I rotated the part and it worked.




Lets see if it prints this way...

The Mystery of the Day: Does it Print This Way?

Ryan,

Yea, it is even sunny-side up!

All the best,
Charles Sloane

Which Way Does it Print?

Andrew Simon Thomas,

Will Shapeways print the way the support render shows for pricing?

I have asked a couple times here, but everyone is busy. And one of us has posted that Shapeways will actually print any which way they please at the moment (so to speak).

So:
1) Is the support render only for pricing?
Or:
2) is the support render for both pricing and printing?

The answer would be nice to know while we await the completion of the Print Orientation Tool.

All the best,
Charles Sloane

We've had these questions answered before but way back in the thread somewhere.

Currently the render is only for pricing, the engineer who actually puts your print in the tray is free to change the orientation; usually because they think a different orientation would be "better". This means you currently get the cheapest price but may get a better orientation.

Once print orientation goes live it will default to the cheapest orientation (as now) and unless you fix that orientation the engineer will still be free to change it. If you fix the orientation though then it should print that way. But given that we still don't have the orientation tool I guess that might change; I made the suggestion that allowing the engineer to change the orientation would be both confusing and might mean some people underpaying/subsidizing prints if the engineer consistently changed the orientation to a more expensive one to improve quality but didn't in anyway report this to the designer.

Mark

Which goes back to the beginning showing the last 30 pages of comments is for naught as were back to subsidizing each others models shooting the whole pricing "fix" as a farce.

So far the prospect of cheaper FUD seems great as for most of my range, for what is actually being offered in comparison to the UK model railway market the price is over the top high in my opinion, however the idea that turning the body shells upside down to reduce cost only to reduce quality seems a bit of a catch 22. So if we flip it to best quality orientation does that mean the price will go up more than it originally was before the change?

Reading the above issue of people flipping it in the tray willy nilly is a worry if what people are suggesting is true, that being prices will be automatically yo-yo-ing more than the exchange rate does.

I find it hard to believe this would happen though. If someone has paid 70 or whatever for a model it doesn't make sense for Shapeways to contact the customer and demand another 15 from them or even to refund them 15. Same goes for our mark-up.

If this truly happens then it will be one of the best balls ups ever!

Don't think there will be demands of more money from shapeways but when folks are paying for one orientation and getting another is my issue. So I continue to sit on the sidelines.

Ok fair enough.

I'm rather worried to be honest. I have visions of it all going full blown live and prices then going all over the place and upon checking each model finding they are bathtub or something. Will just have to wait and see.

As much as we all whinge (and often with good reason) we have all been screaming for the tools so that's good in itself they are being made.

My understanding is that they would only alter the orientation of you hadn't fixed it using the new to when it appears. If an engineer did change a model orientation in those cases then I guess the difference in cost would come out of shapeways profit, although I agree it would still look like others were subsidizing the prints. What I feel is more unfair is that if two people print entirely the same model and one codes the best but more expensive orientation and one leaves the orientation unset but gets the same orientation chosen for them it at least seems unfair, although I guess it would be pot luck if it happened for every print of the same model.

Mark

If the user specifies the orientation desired and a Shapeways print technician alters it there should be some communication to this effect. I don't mind paying a premium for an orientation that gives me the quality I desire and I will orient the models when the tool is available to accomplish that goal. But if I set a particular orientation and that is ignored - especially if I'm charged a premium for it - I'm sure I won't be alone in being unhappy.

No one said they would change the orientation once you'd picked one, only if you didn't explicitly set an orientation did they suggest the engineer might change it

Mark

No one from SW has confirmed that they won't change the orientation either. We all know the techs have the ability to separate parts and orient them as they see fit.....

And what about the third party printers that SW uses to handle workload...

I for one want guarantees from SW of my selected orientation when the tool arrives, regardless of where it is printed.

I'm fairly certain they did confirm that if you set an orientation then that would not be changed, although I can't be bothered hunting through 30 pages to find it. What they said (and I replied about it being confusing and possibly unfair) was that if you didn't pick an orientation then the tool would choose the cheapest but the engineer would be free to change it.

There would be zero point providing the option for print orientation if they were simply going to ignore the settings we choose.

Having said that it's now Friday and we were promised either the orientation tool or an update on progress today so......

Mark

This goes back to my partnership comment. I want it in writing in the materials requirements, and not in a forum.

I'm not going to bet my paycheck on having an update or a release date today.

Erm, "next Friday" was 3 days ago. No launch, no update.

Like a lot of folks here, I've been holding off releasing any new models until the orientation control is in place...

3D print Orientation for FUD is now LIVE and being processed through the system. To continue the discussion on the new Orientation tool please post here.

At Least the Tool is Running Now

Mark,

Thanks for the detailed reply (too bad no one from Shapeways felt it was worth their time for a quick mention of this to me). I got late notice of the pricing change and this discussion's existence, and it was already a quite long, I guess I should have read through all that stuff.... (blech)

Still, not all is lost in my efforts, Shapeways advice on how to reduce the printing cost of a model is too superficial, cannot work, does not help, and has caused a lot of confusion.

Thanks again, see y'all in the new discussion!

Thanks,
Charles Sloane