Printing Technology

[Mike W]

If they can do this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17357374

why can't Shapeways print consistently at a much larger scale??

[rote Flügel]

Word...

[Mike W]

Word...

I think the "word" is competition...or lack thereof

[Qwibqwib]

Consistency is the word here. Shapeways can do some good work. The models I got from them recently were really good (I didn't even have them polished). I have seen some shapeways models that were horrible. Consistency...

[Oberst Hajj]

Well, there is are several reasons really. Shapeways is in the business of mass producing products. They can't afford to invest time and effort into each model like we all would like. They also have many different printers being operated by many different people. This leads to those inconsistencies. Just today I received three planes printed in FD (which shows the print orientation verywell). All three of them were printed in a different orientation. I'm not sure if they were printed by different people or different machines, or if they were just "crammed" on to the tray in ways to make them fit... something I hope to find out.