SHAPEWAYS PRICE HIKE ON THE 30TH

[thebrighton]

I wonder how long Shapeways can keep going as they are becoming more and more expensive for both print and postage whilst the tech and consequently quality is falling way behind what you can print at home.
Historically I've had to wait a while for orders to arrive but have been happy to pay for the cheapest, slowest postal option so on Saturday at 9.05pm I placed an order for 3 items (only because the designers have no plans to make them available elsewhere) with the cheap post option and at 9.44am today was advised they had been dispatched!
Although cracking service it says to me that if they can turn around an order in a fraction over 48 hours when the advised dispatch day would be 15th July they are struggling for business.

[woodbury22uk]

I am inclined to agree that they clearly do not have much work on, and that their pricing for printing and shipping makes them mostly unattractive. I have made most of my Shapeways shop files available for free download (from the Shapeways site)  so people can print or modify them at home. Grouping items to order helps offset the shipping cost but the base pricing is such that printing almost any of the coaches in my shop would be far, far cheaper on a home resin machine, and the savings would soon pay for the cost of the machine.

[Snowwolflair]

I wonder how long Shapeways can keep going as they are becoming more and more expensive for both print and postage whilst the tech and consequently quality is falling way behind what you can print at home.
Historically I've had to wait a while for orders to arrive but have been happy to pay for the cheapest, slowest postal option so on Saturday at 9.05pm I placed an order for 3 items (only because the designers have no plans to make them available elsewhere) with the cheap post option and at 9.44am today was advised they had been dispatched!
Although cracking service it says to me that if they can turn around an order in a fraction over 48 hours when the advised dispatch day would be 15th July they are struggling for business.

what material?  and what size?  My guess is you got lucky and the parts fitted in a hole in a bigger print batch.

[thebrighton]

what material?  and what size?  My guess is you got lucky and the parts fitted in a hole in a bigger print batch.

Smoothest fine detail, coach, loco and wagon. Don't think it was luck, an order last month only took a couple of days longer. Following the prints status after ordering they moved to production within 12 hours.
Technology has left them behind.

[Snowwolflair]

I understand your gripe, but in the absence of an alternative market place for designers to sell their designs (as no one has viewed it as profitable to compete yet) what is the alternative. 

I am selling between 2-4 models a week through the Shapeways shop and whilst I wont get rich the markup I make pays for the prototyping cost of my new models.  Particularly as my buyers are worldwide, even with my own ability to print I would not be able to satisfy their need even if they knew about my designs in the first place.  The Shapeways shop is irreplaceable at the moment.

As far as prototyping I print on my own printer.

Remember there is a price for the designer and a price for the customer which has a markup earned by the designer.

[thebrighton]

I understand your gripe, but in the absence of an alternative market place for designers to sell their designs (as no one has viewed it as profitable to compete yet) what is the alternative. 

I am selling between 2-4 models a week through the Shapeways shop and whilst I wont get rich the markup I make pays for the prototyping cost of my new models.  Particularly as my buyers are worldwide, even with my own ability to print I would not be able to satisfy their need even if they knew about my designs in the first place.  The Shapeways shop is irreplaceable at the moment.

As far as prototyping I print on my own printer.

Remember there is a price for the designer and a price for the customer which has a markup earned by the designer.

I'm not disagreeing with you on any of your points other than Shapeways have been left behind when it comes to tech.
I have received numerous prints from peoples home printers using the latest resins with very little if any layering, the quality is simply stunning but the best you can get from Shapeways is their smoothest fine detail plastic which still requires hours of sanding etc to lose the print lines whilst remaining very brittle.
I know there is currently very little alternative which is the issue. If Shapeways want to remain at the forefront of 3D printing they need to move to these new printing techniques. IMHO they are resting on their laurels being the only worldwide option so aren't bothering to move with the times.

[Snowwolflair]

Yes but home printers giving this type of output are almost always UV resin types (like the one I have) and the support structure needs to be removed and the damaged face where it was attached fixed.

From this point of view it is alternative technology not better.

However there are better technologies and if you pay 50 times more you can already get prints that take 50 times longer to print have 50 times the number of layers and are as smooth as a babies b**m.  They metal sinter gas turbine blades this way.  Its all to do with you get what you pay for.

Also if you have an employee of Shapeways manage your print you have to pay for it, a cost which a print from another modeller does not include, nor an amortising of the cost of their machine.

i.e. my machine cost me £1400, I have run about 250 print runs so far so every print I have done has cost me £5.60 before I count the cost of the resin and electricity, and I have certainly not factored in my time.

[Jim Easterbrook]

As a consumer who is unlikely ever to want more than half a dozen printed items in a year it would make no sense to buy my own printer and learn how to use it. I would like to buy better quality prints than Shapeways supply and of course would like to pay less. The fact there isn't a rival service (that I'm aware of) suggests to me that Shapeways aren't milking the market that much.

[thebrighton]

Yes but home printers giving this type of output are almost always UV resin types (like the one I have) and the support structure needs to be removed and the damaged face where it was attached fixed.

From this point of view it is alternative technology not better.

However there are better technologies and if you pay 50 times more you can already get prints that take 50 times longer to print have 50 times the number of layers and are as smooth as a babies b**m.  They metal sinter gas turbine blades this way.  Its all to do with you get what you pay for.

Also if you have an employee of Shapeways manage your print you have to pay for it, a cost which a print from another modeller does not include, nor an amortising of the cost of their machine.

i.e. my machine cost me £1400, I have run about 250 print runs so far so every print I have done has cost me £5.60 before I count the cost of the resin and electricity, and I have certainly not factored in my time.

You are still missing my point. Yep you have to remove the supports from UV resin types but I've no issues doing that and the damaged face where they are fixed are underneath if so designed, not on the outside of the model where Shapeways have layering. It is alternative technology but from my point of view is better as the viewable part of the model doesn't need priming, sanding, priming, sanding etc.
Yep, a Shapeways employee has to clean things up (although not always that well), so what? Dunk it in an ultrasonic cleaner. With a couple of resin locos I've bought the supplier has offered to snip all the supports off for a couple of quid.
Obviously your opinion is different to mine but to me the quality of a UV resin print is far superior for less cost than Shapeways smoothest fine detail plastic. Snipping off supports and a bit of sanding of hidden areas is far easier than trying to get rid of layering which is the only option from Shapeways.
Cost of the designers time is factored in whether a home print or Shapeways.

[njee20]

I've often looked at putting my designs on Shapeways, but it's just too expensive IMO. I'm happy printing them myself, ok it may mean people wait a bit, and perhaps that'll cost me sales, but I do it for a bit of fun and to make models I want, offsetting the cost of the equipment (no reason to spend £1400 on a printer after all; the <£250 Mars and Photon have a finer resolution, although I realise the Shuffle XL has other benefits) and supplies. 

I-Materialise are cheaper than Shapeways, they don't like spruing of models, But for one off models it appears viable.