tossedman Posted July 3, 2024 Share Posted July 3, 2024 (edited) 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, 2024 by tossedman 2 Link to comment
bc6 Posted July 3, 2024 Share Posted July 3, 2024 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. 1 Link to comment
Cat Posted July 3, 2024 Share Posted July 3, 2024 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. 2 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted July 3, 2024 Share Posted July 3, 2024 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 2 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted July 17, 2024 Share Posted July 17, 2024 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. cheers, jeff 2 Link to comment
maihama eki Posted July 18, 2024 Share Posted July 18, 2024 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. Link to comment
cteno4 Posted July 18, 2024 Share Posted July 18, 2024 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 Link to comment
cteno4 Posted December 3, 2024 Share Posted December 3, 2024 More on the resurrection of Shapeways here: jeff Link to comment
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