Shapeways Bankrupt

[tossedman]

Apparently Shapeways has ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy ‘after considering all strategic alternatives.’

More info here.

 

I didn't use Shapeways often but when I did I always got a quality product. I wouldn't be surprised if high quality resin prints done at home partially contributed to this.

 

Cheers,

 

Todd

Edited July 3 by tossedman

[bc6]

Wow really, I always thought their prices were high and the search function extremely slow. Everyone and their mother offers 3D printing and at half the price looks like they couldn't compete with smaller shops. 

[Cat]

I did get a number of good things there, but at a premium price and heck of a pain to clean.  I'll take a resin print option any time.

[cteno4]

Bummer, early on they were the leader and one of the few goto places for smaller high resolution stuff. But such a quickly changing market and cellphone resin printers I guess did them in… it was nice to find stuff already drafted and get some printed for a decent price (well sometimes it was prohibitively high).

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Hopefully many of those shapeways sources can find other small print firms to make them available again. They may have to do the shipping themselves and loose the built in store front though. I think the 3d print industry will go thru a similar thing digital 2d printing did where all the services and shops at first tried to do it all and keep up with ever advancing technology and plummeting equipment prices and collapsed into an industry of niche shops doing specific types of printing that is just beyond what the normal consumer could do at home or do it in bulk economically. In the end I think it will be better than a big company trying to do it all. The storefront model I think also hurt them when there were printing problems as mostly thus was design errors and not print errors, but shapeways was the target of most of the grief and ended up replrintign many things that I’m sure cost them a lot of profit. They tried to combat this some with some standards and such but it’s so dicy to know until something prints how well it will hold up. Many finer details became out of standards even if they printed fine before the standards. Shipping prices also went on sharp increases when they were trying to grow and that hurt them. Many times a small less that $10 print could cost $10 to ship domestically. That’s going to hit all new stuff as well though, but was just an additional hit and their free shipping promotions probably cost them some bucks (they did one just before closing and those look not to have shipped).

 

there is a new site out there, Craft Cloud, that helps line up folks with potential smaller print shops for jobs. A miniaturist friend has been scrambling to get all her shapeways sources resourced in various ways to keep her supply chain going for sales and class kits. I’ll get the name of it.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[maihama eki]

That's a shame. I've used them for 8 years and generally been happy with their work. I found them through our no-longer-active fellow JNS'er, Kabutoni. Some of my first Shapeways purchases were his designs, and I've continued to buy his designs even recently.

 

I always thought they charged good prices. I can look back to orders I made in 2016, and it appears to me that their prices have gone down since then. Lately, for around $10, I could send them a design and they would return parts in around 2 weeks (shipping not included). They would do the design checking, post processing, formatting and support generation for the printers, print the pieces, clean them up, package them, and ship them to me. That $10 covered all the overhead of the printers, the facility, utilities, the materials purchase and storage, labor, insurance, etc. ... and apparently no profit.

 

Shapeways had a lot of customers. Someone will figure out a way to do this work and make money.

 

 

[cteno4]

Always the issue of being in a rapidly changing business, great potential but also potential great pitfalls…

 

I was always surprised how much work they did for the price. Some in the marketplace were expensive, but that was just the file makerk’s markup.

 

jeff

[maihama eki]

I placed a test order with Sculpteo earlier this week. They are based in France, but seem to have an office in Oakland, CA. I see that they are owned by BASF since 2019.

 

https://www.sculpteo.com/en/

 

The part price was very good. The promised ship date was only 1 week after I placed the order. The shipping cost is somewhat higher which makes me think my order may be coming from France. If so, I anticipate shipping will take longer.

 

I will report how it went when they deliver the parts.

 

 

Edited September 11 by maihama eki

[maihama eki]

Belated response on this… the order from Sculpteo went pretty well. 

Uploading the file and placing the order was very easy. I placed the order on Sept 9. They estimated a ship date one week later, but actually shipped on Sept 13. This was their standard production time, not expedited. The order arrived at my house on Sept 16 - exactly 1 week from order to parts in hand which is almost unbelievable. This is far faster than Shapeways even paying for expedited processing.

 

The cost was also very reasonable. I paid $7.07 each for a print that would have been twice that much at Shapeways. My print was 5 pieces of the post shown below tied together into 1 file. It is a 1/4 inch scale station post. The print technology is different though, so it’s not an exact comparison. Shipping was $19, but that was for express shipping from France to Colorado. 
 

The not so good is that Sculpteo doesn’t have an equivalent to Shapeways Fine Detail Plastic. I ordered Sculpteo’s:

Material: Multijet Fusion, PA12 (Grey)

Finish: Not Dyed Polished, Grey
This is from an HP printer. I’ve ordered this material before, and was a little skeptical about the resolution. It seemed like one of 2 possible options they had for highet resolution. 
 

Here is a photo of the results. On the left is the Sculpteo MJF piece as printed. On the right is the Shapeways Fine Detail piece, painted. If you zoom in you can see the sharper details on the Shapeways piece.

 

 

In summary, I was very happy with Sculpteo’s interface, pricing, and delivery, and I will definitely order from them again. I need to find a better material option though, especially for n scale stuff.