I thought it would be beneficial to give a brief overview of how Shapeways actually works, and where the process can fail:
- A designer decides to create a new Shapeways model. They use their favorite 3D modeling program and all the nice drawings and photos they can find to create a 3D model of the plane. In order to pass Shapeways checking tools, the designer knows the limits in each material and designs so that most checks will pass. For instance, "walls" (flat surfaces) have to be 0.7mm thick or more to print in WSF material, so the designer makes sure the wings are at least 0.7mm thick. "Wires" (things like struts and guns) have to be 0.8mm or 1.0mm in diameter. Depending much a feature protrudes from its parent surface, it might be considered just surface detail (and not subject to rules) or it might be considered a standalone feature (and subject to rules). This modeling is very different than what is done for a computer-graphics model: they're free to use up to 1,000,000 triangles without worrying about performance, but they have to be careful to meet all those minimum sizes and keep the surface "closed".
- The designer uploads the plane to Shapeways. At this point it is not visible to anyone else. There are a set of automated checks that run and flag problems -- especially wall thickness. (But unfortunately not "wire thickness".) Sometimes the designer will go through several rounds of tweaking something and uploading until the Shapeways tools are happy. Assuming these automated checks pass, the designer can then turn the model into a "Product", which means adding in descriptive text, picking which materials will be available, etc.
- The designer picks the markup, which can be anything from $0.00 up. That markup is added to the "model price", which is how much Shapeways computes it will cost them to make the model (plus some profit). Most designers choose something between $1 to $5 markup for each 1:144 plane.
- Once everything is ready, the designer marks the product as publicly-visible and ready for sale. It is marked "First to Try" since no one has printed it yet.
- Now someone orders that product. If it has never been printed before (or, at least, since the last time the model was uploaded), a Shapeways employee looks at the model and decides whether it's printable. This isn't a science and one employee might be fine with something that another will flag as a problem. If the employee doesn't like it, the order is rejected and a note is sent to the designer and the customer.
- Next Shapeways adds the model to one of their print runs. For WSF that means your airplane is printed along with 1,000 other things in a huge block of white powder. An employee has to separate each plane out of that block, which is like doing an archaeological dig. If they fumble it, they break your model and sometimes (IMHO) blame the designer, mark the order rejected and the model as unprintable. This is how a model gets rejected even though it has printed okay one hundred times before. Other times they'll acknowledge the model is okay and just try to print it again. If a model doesn't maintain an 80% successful print rate, it gets marked "First To Try" again. To make matters worse, they subcontract some of their printing, and the subcontractors might have different guidelines and skill levels.
- If the print looks okay to their eye, it's packed and shipped to the customer (and this is another source of errors.. a plane could print without a propeller and they'd probably never notice). I've seen a lot of prints that came out of the printer fine and then got bent and twisted during shipping.
- On a monthly basis Shapeways sums the markups of every successful print and sends it to the developer via PayPal, minus a small cut that they keep.
As a designer, the most frustrating part is having a design print dozens of times okay and then getting a rejection with a dubious excuse and diagram of how it "can't be printed due to thin wires" or "weak parts".
On a side note: I do really appreciate it when someone refers to one of my planes as a "Reduced Aircraft Factory design" instead of a "Shapeways plane". It acknowledges the work the designer has put in is more important than the machine that fuses tiny plastic beads.
Fortunately, Shapeways has gotten incrementally better at almost every step here over the years. (WSF prints are much higher quality now than in 2014.) It's still not an exact science, though.
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