This is very sad news. I started out doing my printing with them before I got my own printers. For years I made the majority of my income from my Shapeways shop. Then they changed their website so visitors basically didn't even know the shops existed. My sales dropped like a rock. Edit: I always printed one of everything I sold so that I had a photo to show.
I found out that it wasn’t cheap to have something printed. I wanted the echo dot Gramazon and it cost more than a 3d printer. So like an idiot I bought an Ender 3. But I did my homework and I actually got one printed. I was blown away by all the things I could make. Never regretted it for a second. But you really have to study and at 70 never thought I would be doing homework again! It’s not just plug and play like your computer printer. 😂🤣😂🤣
@@Shenandoahleather Yep. Trade your frustrations with the printing process for completely different frustrations. (Currently fighting with one that decides, randomly, not to talk to the network).
@@SwervingLemon I had some issues connecting it with OrcaSlicer. Actually, never got it to work. But the Bambu Studio connected perfectly. Maybe I’ll try again but, eh.
I'm in the competition RC world and many of my buddies have home printers. Sure those work if you want to print a spacer, but if the part needs to hold up to stresses, so far, they fail. Shapeways used SLS printers to produce most of their parts, which resulted in tight tolerances and were smooth in finish. They would also printed MJF or provide metal parts if you desired. I doubt they were using $1000 printers. Yes their prices were high, and the designer only received a few percentage point of the final sale price, but it was a great source for many of us who needed the parts. Without the file we can't just go somewhere else.
The designer made as much as they liked. I had some RC spare parts up on shapeways. Most notably for the Tamiya Porsche 959 rally. I hated the top dollar prices of commercial spares so I only did between.50 and 1 euro markup on my parts. But one could do hundreds of Euro's in markups if they liked. And if someone was willing to pay the total and you getting that $200 markup you'd be smiling all the way to the bank...
LMAO Shapways outsourced all of their SLS orders to companies like Formlabs, besides I've never seen an SLS printer( that works correctly) that's less than 4000 bucks
I became a Shapeways designer by accident. I got frustrated by the low availability of accurate dinosaur skull models so I started researching and making my own. A few people said they wanted to buy them so I started a Shapeways shop. Didn't sell tons due to them needing paint and stands plus Shapeways was TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. Buyers who took the plunge were happy customers though
As a Transformers fan, Shapeways was an interesting idea back in the day, but it was wildly expensive... 40$ for a 1.40$ part? Hell no. It was cheaper to wait for an upgrade kit to come along. Now that consumer grade 3d printers are common, SW has lost the only thing they had: production exclusivity. I'd rather pay for an STL than premade stuff at a premiun any day.
I have bought some 3D printed upgrades, and my reasoning was that a 15 euro upgrade was more affordable than a box of upgrades of which I only really needed one for 30 euros.
That $40 for a $1,40 part means that the designer put a huge markup on the part. Nothing to do with shapeways and their fabrication base price. I made a point of only taking $0.50-1 on most RC spare parts I had on shapeways. Only a few larger bits went up to a $2.50 markup. Don't blame shapeways too much. Yes, even some of my personal designs were expensive because of bounding box volume, whilst the actual produc volume was quite low. I didn't print those because of the manufacturing price.
My GF and I are both into Transformers, although she's got by far the bigger collection. Going to Shapeways to pay $20 plus shipping for an alternate head for a $20 figure never quite made sense for me (money's never been great for me) and I only made a few of those purchases about a decade ago. I've been interested in making figures of my own, eventually got better with Blender and successfully designed and built a couple through JLC, and as of this month I've finally got my own resin printer for half what I would have paid even a couple years ago. Shapeways was exciting out of the gate back when the only accessible alternative was buying a clunky and coarse FDM printer of one's own, but the Shapeways value proposition has stayed the same while other options became more accessible, and I wouldn't be surprised if exactly the kinds of hobbyists you and I represent have all just moved on to other methods, whether buying STLs and having them printed somewhere or doing the modeling and printing ourselves, that are just more suited to the hobby space than the robot Etsy model ever was.
Those prices are all from the shops. I was selling most things for under $10. What I really liked them for and I wish I did more of, was the lost wax casting they would do of prints. It was actually quite reasonably priced when I had them made, cheaper than having a local jeweler make them. For my wife and mom I created some silver pendants, and they turned out great. One of a kind pieces now.
@@chadvoller I agree 100% on the jewelry aspect of Shapeways. I have found that Shapeways was quite reasonable in price/quality/time compared to local jewelers. Very saitsfied with Shapeways.
My daughter gave me a gift certificate for Shapeways for Christmas 2019. I used it to get a Baby Yoda printed in January 2020, six months before official toys came out…my coworkers were asking how I got this item so fast…
I had a HUGE "Favorites" list (Mostly Printle and "Panzer vs Tanks") and was slowly making my way through purchasing the items on my list with two large hauls a year. Yes... like the title of this video indicates, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW?!!
There were a few in model railroading who were putting their designs up on Shapeways. Unfortunately the price for these prints kept going up, making it hard to justify buying them in any quantity. As for me, I bought 3 models and 2 had the base pieces bowed enough that I would have risked breaking them to get them into alignment with the bodies. It was hard to know if that was a designer flaw or a flaw in how Shapeways made the prints.
@@3dpprofessor I had a shop on SW focused on 1/48 narrow gauge. Those items were chiefly done for me but were offered to the community via the shop. That community is a penny-pinching group. Even with items prices set to at or below comparable items in other media, the general feeling was that the SW 3d items were 'too expensive'. Within that group, there is very definitely a mindset that 3d prints should be cheep (volume injection molded plastic cheep). I've seen some of my designs done on good filament printers by very experienced people. Frankly, they suck. There is so much more post-print processing compared to the SW MJF prints. For small scale items, you lose or risk losing design details in the post processing. That defeats design intent. -- I'm looking at some of the alternative print businesses you mentioned for my needs. (I have zero interest in owning a printer of any kind.) My shop on SW may never return. It wasn't paying my bills, but it did provide items to the hobby community.
@@slant3d Absolutely. I've made freight and passenger cars in Z & N scales. Buildings as well. I use a FlashForge Adventurer 3. I'm making many of my designs available for sale. I know of one customer who's made prints of my designs. If it works in the smaller scales it will work in the larger scales, too.
I honestly forgot about them and am surprised they survived as long as they did. It was a cool concept years ago, but I see more and more people owning 3D printers. The Maker community will fill this gap. The only challenge will be connecting customers with people who own the printers. Maybe a good use case for Etsy or the social media platforms.
It was really convenient for me to have over a thousand designs up on shapeways, have people buy them and I just get $2 each time someone bought one. No additional work for me once I design the part.
The best part of Shapeways was that designers could connect with customers looking for a special product they wanted from all over the world without having to spend a billion hours looking for those people online. The 3D printing market will die if the average person has to learn how to design in 3D in order to get what they need. That was the best part for designers....ability to engage with people wanting something that they offered. I for one bought a ton of N scale train accessories that I was unable to find anywhere else even from major manufacturers. The problem now is how can I reach out to the vendors who are now left to float around in internet space trying to keep their business alive? If Shapeways had been any kind of "ethical" company at all they would not have had a 15% off sale 2 weeks before closing. If that wasn't enough why could they not post a page online offering vendors a place to post their contact information so they could at least give them a fighting chance for survival. Can you say "take the money and run"? Just my thoughts.
Never knew they shut down....they must still be fulfilling existing orders. I ordered two weeks ago and just received it a few days ago. But compared to iMaterialize and Scuplteo which had comparable prices - Shapeways gave me much better customer service and their method of shipping was much better(importing from Canada). If they really have shut down I'll have to change. Buying my own printing machine is out of the question - there currently is still no 'home' printer that can get the same quality I got from Shapeways. There is money in 3D printing - one just has to design and print things in applications that can't be challenged and is actually not a viable option for mass produced items. e.g. Spending 5-7k on a tool/die rig - then 2-4k for an initial run - you now have just spent close to 10k on a single item that may or may not sell. That's for plastics. For metals, like high polished brass, silver, etc. What, jumping on a plane to India, Mexico, China(Asia) to get a 'foundry' to 'mass' produce your items...the cost. In many ways, 3D printing with companies with Shapeways is actually cheaper. It's more of having unreasonable expectations on whether your product may be high selling in numbers or not.
I used Shapeways to prototype some of my 3d models as I couldn't afford a printer at the time and Shapeways was fairly reasonably priced, about £4 - £6 for small parts. 18 months later the exact same models in the exact same material was now 10 times the cost. So they lost my business and I bought a printer.
Thanks for the Shoutout. Absolutely! Building a full marketplace is one of the toughest businesses to be in. That is why we opted for the Etsy and Shopify Integration Route. That way we can print and ship items for the sellers (What we do well). And Etsy/Shopify can help with obtaining the customers (What they do well). That way the seller gets the resources of two organizations helping them rather than one single marketplace. (BTW we didn't know about the Mask Community either. We need to find those people)
I never thought having someone else print for me to be cost effective. Especially while working on the model's functionality. I went through several versions to get the one that I like best. That would have cost a lot more than the $300 I paid for my printer. The self-taught CAD lessons along are uncalculatable. Plus, I own the models.
CAD is becoming as ubiquitous as word processors and following a similar timeline. Owning and iteratingon your own designs is also worth several times as much as the printer and time spent, especially for someone like me that's looking into uaing those designs commercially.
I like the analogy of relating the development of CAD to the development of word processors. If you hear me using that one day in a video, feel free to take credit for it.
Learning CAD has enhanced my ability to think in 3D. I'm able to visually work the idea in the 3D space in my mind just like I would in the program. An invaluable tool.
I started a small company doing prototyping and I found that after I completed the work, the client would buy a 3D printer and start doing the prototyping themselves. There was no repeat business and the money dried up pretty quickly. Ultimately, if you need 3D printing you're going to do it in-house. Furthermore, the printing part is easy. It's the modeling that's the hard part. To get a quality, watertight STL you need to have a good background in modeling complex parts. That takes many years of using 3D software which is some of the most complicated software available. Then you have to account for materials, shrinkage, various surface finishes and a lot of unexpected issues. It's no wonder Shapeways couldn't make it. The margins just aren't there.
" There was no repeat business and the money dried up pretty quickly. Ultimately, if you need 3D printing you're going to do it in-house." What kind of printers were you using? I can't afford the 6 figure machines that give the results they do. These home machines simply don't cut it.
The quality you can print from relatively low cost 3D printers is so much better than it was when Shapeways started up. It's not surprising to me that this business model didn't survive.
it would have helped more if Shapways didn't remodel their business plan, they screwed a lot of people when they chose to hide the marketplace from their website
@@thomaswakefield6889 It seems like an odd choice. Giving people *less* reason to use their services. Maybe they just got tired of dealing with people. I can relate.
I can see how the lack of vetting of the designs could lead to some angry customers for some of the more mechanically demanding designs. It took me a while with my own personal printer to learn what I could "get away with" mechanically with a 3D print. Little things like the orientation of the print on the bed make a huge difference in the strength of the part.
"The quality you can print from relatively low cost 3D printers is so much better than it was when Shapeways started up." My experience is the opposite. There is no home 3D printer that can deliver the same quality of print that comes out of a 6 figure cost machine.
As much as everyone has been saying how expensive they were, I could not find anyone cheaper for full color printing. I used them for color landscapes and city scapes, while using my own resin printers for plain white. There aren’t that many places that offer full color nylon MJF or gypsum ColorJet, and every time I looked for alternatives, Shapeways had the lowest price per cubic centimeter.
I use professionally 3D printed steel and Shapeways was waaaay to overprices, and delivery times where way too long. And form a professional way, ordering true a website isn't the most easiest. Btw the article says they seized operation but nothing on their website says so.
Shapeway was so pricy to have something made. 6 years ago I planned to have something printed but needed 60 of them and at the time I only knew Shapeway offer such service. They wanted to charge like 15$ a piece without shipping so I scrubbed the idea. A few years later I found exactly the same thing I wanted on Aliexpress done in injection molding at fractions of Shapeway price and that was what I went with. 3D printers got so much better and cheaper these days and I don’t see the reason the go to Shapeway any more. Plus nowadays we have 3D print service behind the Great Wall and they ship to you at lower cost.
SHAPEWAYS helped me see the potential in 3D printing. My logo is based off a half mask model I made from re-working a model rip of Jason voorhees mask from MKX! The low polygons gave it a cool look actually and I thought to myself that I could make any physical object on my computer! This was way back in 2018 I think and since then I’ve taught myself how to 3D model in Blender (because it’s free and open source so I can use it forever without issue) .
There are other services out there, from 3d printing to CNC'ing. But you will pay for it. If you need just basic 3d printed stuff, buy a printer or find someone with a consumer printer. If you need professional level parts you need a professional printer. Shapeways offered that at a fairly reasonable price. Consumers think its expensive but its really not. I have been involved in design/engineering/manufacturing for 20 years now and it is not what people think! When I tried to come up with a business plan of what I thought their model was (before knowing they contracted out) I was blown away how Shapeways could do it at the price they were.
I feel like part of the problem is that most people who would take advantage of the service are also the types to eventually buy a cheap 3d printer and just do it themselves.
@@3dpprofessor True, but it won't stop people from trying. I started with a cheap one and spent more time prying failed prints from the plate than actually printing. Once you get a good result, it's wonderful though!
I never stopped using Shapeways for replacement parts for my boat or the engine. I could design and print custom throttle linkage adapters or portal dogs.
I have used them several times. I thought they were a bit on the expensive size, but since I rarely need something printed, they were always a great service for me anyway. It will be interesting to see if there will be someone else to take over that market share.
Thanks for your view on this. I'm glad I use my printers to experiment and learn, not make money. I have made things on request for people, friends, and try not to charge for them, because any realistic price would be too high for the time and work involved. I do special projects to learn new techniques and software
I believe Bambi labs and others have democratized 3d printing so much that there is not suffice to margin in this kind of service to act as a printer brokerage. As you point out there was no value add aside perhaps from being a repository. There time had come as is usually the case for those that choose not to evolve in a rapidly evolving market.
I'm not sure that the home market completely negated the value of a 3D printing service completely. Shapeway's 3D printers are capable of printing geometries that FDM 3D printing can't touch. But it definitely took a chunk out of their market share.
3D printing is a big part of model railroading. If it was a new cover for your engine or printing a new rolling stock car. But what was really cool was those who made specialty vehicles for HO or N Scale layouts - now that Shapeways is gone, there is no way for me to continue my relationship with these printers/designers.
I never used their marketplace, but I did use them for printing things that were too big for the common desktop printers as single piece. They weren't bad price-wise for that, but the metal printing seemed high in the era of lost pla, etc casting.
Just about everyone at my local gaming store has a 3d printer. We go crazy for this stuff. The only thing I really went to shapeways for was stuff like the "ultra frosted detail" prints or the occasional metal print. A guy at my D&D group had a custom mini printed in metal. The ability to access the high end printers is the real loss here.
Shapeways to me was a way to 3D print things with machines I could not afford. So when I design a custom part for my car for example, I can FDM print a test part. I can even resin print a mostly functional part but it would get brittle over time. So I would do all of my own r&D on my parts and then have shapeways make one out of aluminum for me. This is especially good for small parts with geometry that would be a little more complicated to machine. Compared to having somebody machine it out of aluminum it's substantially cheaper. It's even cheaper than paying somebody for a low volume aluminum casting. Thankfully there are other places today that I can have my aluminum part added to their system and as long as I'm willing to wait, they will just kind of stick it in with whatever other prints they're running and I can get it for roughly the same price. But it was nice being a normal customer with good turnaround time versus being the cheap extra job that's being thrown in with the real work.
I think that with the current crop of 3D printers starting to get to the point that they are relatively fast, easy to use, and affordable people are starting to make the transition to buying and using a 3D printer. With that a lot of people are trying to jump into becoming a home business and making items to sell at craft shows and cons. The problem is there is a huge overlap in the products sold and varying quality. I have a fleet of 3D printers that I use in my business, but they are a tool in the tool box used along side everything else. Do I make and sell those articulating toys that everyone else makes and sells? Yes, but it’s less the 1% of my total inventory and the idea is that people come to my booth at cons to see what we are working on. Most of those items are large and expensive catering to the cosplay and collectible crowd. Having smaller items available tends to lead to residual sales after people view the items on display in my booth. We also don’t solely rely on 3D printed, scratch built and other hand made items. We have a wide selection of unique licensed merchandise as well. At the end of the day it’s all about finding a niche and focusing on it and building it out. If everyone keeps doing the same thing everyone else does you rapidly find the market flooded with the same or similar items.
I've used it for Transformers accessories in the distant past, but nowadays it's just way cheaper, faster, and easier to buy 3d printed parts off of eBay.
Bummer. On rare occasions, I needed a part I couldn't print, and it was worth a few bucks. The marketplace thing was useless, but the printing service was useful.
I used shapeways to make sandstone statuettes for my and my gfs anniversary each year. I loved them, but for the prices, they just weren't an option for pla/abs/resin, especially since the local library has a printer, and I got myself one. What I was fasinated by though, and would have loved, was there metal options. But again, the prices were just too much. I think it's possible to make money, but unless you have a unique design, or a specific requirement, it's just cheaper and eaiser to get something already made.
I know there are lots of people in the model train community who are hurting by the loss of Shapeways. There were lots of incredible designers like Teebee who had a plethora of 3D models for sale. Not to mention the modelers who used their brass casting service. Tom Knapp who makes incredible brass train models, I have a video on him, is really struggling to find another company that can do things to the same degree that Shapeways could. I am not sure what the future holds, but I know I am trying to figure out an alternative way of doing things for the future.
My issue with Shapeways was that you could never talk with a live Customer Service rep if you had an issue with one of their printed items. The only way to reach them was through email. That kind of service just doesn't work for me.
As I've understood it, the reason shapeways went bankrupt not because of lack of demand but some managers couldn't accept that they were in a niche market, thus taking on more debt to get the company to grow. But you can't just grow a niche market.
From what I´ve heard its also a big problem for the people that sell 3D printed jewelery. shapeways offered many more processes than any other supplier I know. gold, silver, ceramic... Also I have the feeling the marketplace was not dead at all. I only had one thing up there (bit holder for a quite outdated makita drill) and still got a few euros every few months.
As a Transformers fan I've used Shapeways a few times, in order to get small upgrades on my figures. There's still 3rd party companies making stuff the traditional way (with molds), but they also tend to be pricey and they lump their upgrades together in a box where I would rather just have one upgrade. Truth be told, I haven't really thought about Shapeways in a while. Hasbro has been making better Transformers (as in true to the character models from the show) lately, and that might be part of it.
I guess I missed out on that phase of 3D Printing. I never heard them. To have a marketplace for things like this you need buyers, producers and sellers. It sounds like they didn’t woo the producers with reasonable prices, they themselves weren’t able to produce at volume profitably, and the overpriced their stuff to the too few buyers that they had running around the place. It really just failed to hit critical mass.
I used jlpcb not only can they print in metal (not including gold or the finer metals like shapeways) but their clear prints feel like a resin cast and are clear and not this werid semitransparency, granted you could do the sanding and resin casting yourself but if you are prototyping might as well get clearness on the parts that need it
@@thomaswakefield6889 Well, and then there's shipping. There a certain irony to the fact that 3d printing means we can bring manufacturering closer to the consumer, and yet it wasn't close enough. But another part of the problem was that they were using these high end machines that were expensive to own and operate.
Protolabs I think followed a better business strategy showing the offerings of 3D printing alongside other manufacturing techniques to give users the ability to choose what process to use for their prototypes.
I loved shapways for what it was since i could just rely on nyself for getting designs out there in the physical since i mostly expiernced betrayal with other partners.
Years back i was playing with learning solidworks and zbrush, it was always so neat to be able to just send a design off and have it printed (and it was just a hobby curiosity novelty and i was making one-offs so the prices didnt bother me much, in fact i made it a game to try to manually do weight reduction on my models and optimize the price) their color sandstone printing option was really neat, and it's sort of sad to think if I get back into doing that the option is no longer there because they made great prints, though that might be a reason to start printing myself (after the million other things haha)
I had some stuff cast out of metal by them and now I don't know who else I can go to for that sort of thing. I didn't need to have conversations with anyone there, they just sent me stuff made out of silver and I quite liked the idea of making something out of gold at some point
Yeah i.cant even imagine the mess of quality control up and down the supply chain. Good video - terrible comparison of shapeway and TH-cam as platform. TH-cam is a delivery mechanism - you control the creation of your content
I personally don't believe the fact they were not designing parts thus relying to others led them to failure. Although I think they had (correct me if I am wrong) design services as well. On the other hand I did not know they outsourced stuff to be 3d printed. Well that's a thing. The biggest issue was the unreasonable prices. Another thing I did not like was frequent price changes as far as Etsy was concerned. You had to adjust every time your prices for every change they made and for each one of your parts. That was annoying. In the end I do believe their concept was pretty good. Their 3d previews and analysis of your part were something special & the marketplace idea was helping both designers and their company to grow. PS: Actually there is another same concept platform with marketplace. It's i.materialise. I firstly had my few stuff there before I uploaded in shapeways.
That Edison "quote" is probably apocryphal. Shapeways failed for lack of scope. PCBWay seems to have a better handle on that, but I don't understand how their pricing is sustainable, at least on circuit boards. They can make me a dozen boards for less than I can source the materials... #notsponsored.
@@3dpprofessor that’s what I’m working on getting done. I honestly don’t know if I will though bc there is no one there anymore and it is 100% shut down.
@@babajaiy8246 I made my order two days before they ceased all operations. I won’t be getting my order bc it would have taken up to two weeks to finish what I ordered then it would have shipped to me.
@@babajaiy8246I put in my order just two days before they ceased all operations. It would have taken at least two weeks for them to have my order completed and then shipped. It’s been three weeks and nothing. I won’t be getting my order and most likely won’t be getting my money back from said order. Everyone is gone from the company, customer service, workers, the CEO, the COO, and the CFO
I used shapeways to have my 3d designed rings printed in silver about 10 years ago. I had made 2 green lantern rings, a blue ,red and yellow lantern as well as an assassin's creed ring all in silver and I thought the prices were very reasonable.
odd, didn't they charge about 10$ per gram of steel printing? that should really add up. maybe their problem was that no one ordered anything at their high prices?
Wish I had known this a while ago. I placed an order for a very specific part I needed but haven't heard anything from Shapeways or their customer service about it. I placed my order on June 25th, and they said it should ship around July 23rd. Today is August 4th, and my order still says "Processing" like it did the moment I ordered it. I dont want to have to do it, but it looks like I'll need to submit a chargeback if they dont reply to my emails about when my order will be created or canceled.
3D hubs screwed the market when they dropped desktop printers for industrial printers, which hurt a lot of small printers hopeing to pay for their printers
@@3DPT ah, I remember 3dHubs. The thing is 3D Hubs made the market. Then they discovered that when you let anyone fulfill your orders, quality goes down, customer complaints go up, and no ones happy. Like I said, people are the worst.
I shoped shapeways as it was the beat way to get replacement part , weapons third part target masters for transformers. So while not affective it was still important to get millions into manufactoring , any just like it,?
I mean shapeways has been "shutting down" for a while now. Slant 3d's channel been talking about it for a months now they had way to much money tied up in their machinery and the lead times was weeks no one can keep a 3dP business going that way
well, I ordered a bunch of sls prints from them a couple of years back because I needed exact tolerances. today I feel that they would have been an alternative to pcbway because asia import fees are heinous in scandinavia. edit: Edison PATENTED the lightbulb, stories differ on wether he invented it... or anything at all.
Thanks for the video. I disagree with you on a few points in your analysis of Shapeways, I created UNIQUE models for other model railroaders. Shapeways was my showcase of what I could 3D CAD and not having to do all the maintenance and tinkering with a 3D printer at home and having money come into my bank account occasionally was really wonderful and fun to see when someone had bought from me. I had "only" been a designer with a shop on Shapeways for 13 years, I will miss Shapeways, as long as God allows Ukrina to burn I cannot use 3D printing services in China because it fuels the seed interest and after that I am loose in my country
I tried shapeways a few times for quotes, and for basic designs, it just wouldn't be viable. Even at volume, a whole constructed part I make and sell for about 17, couldn't even get the main body printed (SLS) for 25 to 30. So I would not be able to even sell items at cost because I would price myself out of the market. TL;DR: shapeways was too expensive, unless you were selling something for massively more than the printed cost.
I have taken a lot of my printed toy items that were on Shapeways have them printed with cheaper online printers and sell them in other online stores. The problem is I can't keep everything that I've designed, over 1000 designs, in stock in every material and color! I just print out a few of my hottest items and hope they sell.
@@HM3DVIDEOz You should swing by the St. George Library and come say hi in the makerspace some time. That's probably where I'm going to be when you're at the RC field.
Literally first time I have heard of Shapeways, clearly won't be missed. This sector is packed with competition so not at all important. Looking at their website its trash you need to fill in a form by hand to get a quote...lol...the competition just let you upload your design and get to work straight away.
If anybody needs this service, we can print at scale. We have two brand new desktop metal printers. And we have better engineering experience and wisdom than xometry
@@3dpprofessor when I posted, the marketplace et el was still up. It seams the site has now been taken down "for maintenance". Or not, I reload the page and it's working again.
Yeah the model is not likely to come back anytime soon. The main thing 3D printing is used for is to improve the quality and efficiency of regular mass production--so 3D printing helps move the goalposts for making this model viable! So if we were in a world where a $20K machine could 3D print an entire working iPhone 4, working iPhone 4s would be McDonald's toys and no one could make money just printing and selling such junk.
@AndrewWholeaway He's referring to the fact that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I'm expected to donate a tithe of my income to the church. And while whether or not I do is entirely between me and my bishop, I don't mind saying I am a full tithe payer. That's probably why the Lord has blessed me. Windows of Heaven, my friend.
@@andrewholdaway813 I ain't implying anything. He said so. Old Testament. Malachi 3:10 "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
and there lies the failure - distributed "anything" usually fails because COST-SELL=PROFIT - when will u all understand - went same way as voodofx etc... 3d printing as a business is not viable (i know - there are always great exceptions!) but in general dont think u are going to buy a cheap $300 printer and make tons of money - get a job! :)
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Here's what Wayne Losey had to say about Shapeways closing: www.3dpprofessor.com/2024/07/20/what-are-we-going-to-do-now-that-shapeways-is-gone/
This is very sad news. I started out doing my printing with them before I got my own printers. For years I made the majority of my income from my Shapeways shop. Then they changed their website so visitors basically didn't even know the shops existed. My sales dropped like a rock.
Edit: I always printed one of everything I sold so that I had a photo to show.
Did you end up transitioning to a new platform?
Did you ever print for N Scale model railroading?
I found out that it wasn’t cheap to have something printed. I wanted the echo dot Gramazon and it cost more than a 3d printer. So like an idiot I bought an Ender 3. But I did my homework and I actually got one printed. I was blown away by all the things I could make. Never regretted it for a second. But you really have to study and at 70 never thought I would be doing homework again! It’s not just plug and play like your computer printer. 😂🤣😂🤣
This gives me hope that I can get my dad to use the Sovol I gave him (and that he asked for) that's been gathering dust.
Print the shit out of that thing!!!
A Bambu Lab printer is virtually “plug and play”. If you get frustrated with 3d printing, buy a Bambu.
@@Shenandoahleather Yep. Trade your frustrations with the printing process for completely different frustrations. (Currently fighting with one that decides, randomly, not to talk to the network).
@@SwervingLemon I had some issues connecting it with OrcaSlicer. Actually, never got it to work. But the Bambu Studio connected perfectly. Maybe I’ll try again but, eh.
I'm in the competition RC world and many of my buddies have home printers. Sure those work if you want to print a spacer, but if the part needs to hold up to stresses, so far, they fail. Shapeways used SLS printers to produce most of their parts, which resulted in tight tolerances and were smooth in finish. They would also printed MJF or provide metal parts if you desired. I doubt they were using $1000 printers. Yes their prices were high, and the designer only received a few percentage point of the final sale price, but it was a great source for many of us who needed the parts. Without the file we can't just go somewhere else.
Hmm you can always use PEEK or PEKK. You can get a kiln and make metal parts at home.
The designer made as much as they liked. I had some RC spare parts up on shapeways. Most notably for the Tamiya Porsche 959 rally. I hated the top dollar prices of commercial spares so I only did between.50 and 1 euro markup on my parts.
But one could do hundreds of Euro's in markups if they liked. And if someone was willing to pay the total and you getting that $200 markup you'd be smiling all the way to the bank...
@@anthonylong5870 they have all the shapeways files? Without that it's useless.
@@FlexDRGbut from friends with accounts, if they only make maybe $10. And no one would pay 100, so they make $2.
LMAO Shapways outsourced all of their SLS orders to companies like Formlabs, besides I've never seen an SLS printer( that works correctly) that's less than 4000 bucks
I hope someone takes over their online marketplace. It's the really unique thing Shapeways offered.
Interesting Idea
Yes get it back its what all the other 3d printers lack
I became a Shapeways designer by accident. I got frustrated by the low availability of accurate dinosaur skull models so I started researching and making my own. A few people said they wanted to buy them so I started a Shapeways shop. Didn't sell tons due to them needing paint and stands plus Shapeways was TOO DAMN EXPENSIVE. Buyers who took the plunge were happy customers though
Yea. The cost was something we really worked to solve. SLS just has too much touch and too long of a lead time.
As a Transformers fan, Shapeways was an interesting idea back in the day, but it was wildly expensive... 40$ for a 1.40$ part? Hell no. It was cheaper to wait for an upgrade kit to come along. Now that consumer grade 3d printers are common, SW has lost the only thing they had: production exclusivity. I'd rather pay for an STL than premade stuff at a premiun any day.
I have bought some 3D printed upgrades, and my reasoning was that a 15 euro upgrade was more affordable than a box of upgrades of which I only really needed one for 30 euros.
That $40 for a $1,40 part means that the designer put a huge markup on the part. Nothing to do with shapeways and their fabrication base price.
I made a point of only taking $0.50-1 on most RC spare parts I had on shapeways. Only a few larger bits went up to a $2.50 markup.
Don't blame shapeways too much.
Yes, even some of my personal designs were expensive because of bounding box volume, whilst the actual produc volume was quite low. I didn't print those because of the manufacturing price.
My GF and I are both into Transformers, although she's got by far the bigger collection. Going to Shapeways to pay $20 plus shipping for an alternate head for a $20 figure never quite made sense for me (money's never been great for me) and I only made a few of those purchases about a decade ago. I've been interested in making figures of my own, eventually got better with Blender and successfully designed and built a couple through JLC, and as of this month I've finally got my own resin printer for half what I would have paid even a couple years ago.
Shapeways was exciting out of the gate back when the only accessible alternative was buying a clunky and coarse FDM printer of one's own, but the Shapeways value proposition has stayed the same while other options became more accessible, and I wouldn't be surprised if exactly the kinds of hobbyists you and I represent have all just moved on to other methods, whether buying STLs and having them printed somewhere or doing the modeling and printing ourselves, that are just more suited to the hobby space than the robot Etsy model ever was.
Those prices are all from the shops. I was selling most things for under $10. What I really liked them for and I wish I did more of, was the lost wax casting they would do of prints. It was actually quite reasonably priced when I had them made, cheaper than having a local jeweler make them. For my wife and mom I created some silver pendants, and they turned out great. One of a kind pieces now.
@@chadvoller I agree 100% on the jewelry aspect of Shapeways. I have found that Shapeways was quite reasonable in price/quality/time compared to local jewelers. Very saitsfied with Shapeways.
My daughter gave me a gift certificate for Shapeways for Christmas 2019. I used it to get a Baby Yoda printed in January 2020, six months before official toys came out…my coworkers were asking how I got this item so fast…
I had a HUGE "Favorites" list (Mostly Printle and "Panzer vs Tanks") and was slowly making my way through purchasing the items on my list with two large hauls a year.
Yes... like the title of this video indicates,
WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW?!!
There were a few in model railroading who were putting their designs up on Shapeways. Unfortunately the price for these prints kept going up, making it hard to justify buying them in any quantity. As for me, I bought 3 models and 2 had the base pieces bowed enough that I would have risked breaking them to get them into alignment with the bodies. It was hard to know if that was a designer flaw or a flaw in how Shapeways made the prints.
I did forget about the model train community.
But those folks are crafty. I'm sure they'll figure something out.
@@3dpprofessor I had a shop on SW focused on 1/48 narrow gauge. Those items were chiefly done for me but were offered to the community via the shop. That community is a penny-pinching group. Even with items prices set to at or below comparable items in other media, the general feeling was that the SW 3d items were 'too expensive'. Within that group, there is very definitely a mindset that 3d prints should be cheep (volume injection molded plastic cheep). I've seen some of my designs done on good filament printers by very experienced people. Frankly, they suck. There is so much more post-print processing compared to the SW MJF prints. For small scale items, you lose or risk losing design details in the post processing. That defeats design intent. -- I'm looking at some of the alternative print businesses you mentioned for my needs. (I have zero interest in owning a printer of any kind.) My shop on SW may never return. It wasn't paying my bills, but it did provide items to the hobby community.
Is FDM Viable for anything in Model Railroading
@@slant3d Absolutely. I've made freight and passenger cars in Z & N scales. Buildings as well. I use a FlashForge Adventurer 3. I'm making many of my designs available for sale. I know of one customer who's made prints of my designs. If it works in the smaller scales it will work in the larger scales, too.
@@slant3d I mean, it's gotta be in some way, right?
I honestly forgot about them and am surprised they survived as long as they did. It was a cool concept years ago, but I see more and more people owning 3D printers. The Maker community will fill this gap. The only challenge will be connecting customers with people who own the printers. Maybe a good use case for Etsy or the social media platforms.
It was really convenient for me to have over a thousand designs up on shapeways, have people buy them and I just get $2 each time someone bought one. No additional work for me once I design the part.
That part of it was certainly nice... if you could get buyers.
@@3dpprofessor I made over $100 a month in profit in my Shapeways store, plus more in my eBay and Cults3d store. Business was good.
@@3dpprofessor I sold 30-50 items a month from my Shapeways store.
The best part of Shapeways was that designers could connect with customers looking for a special product they wanted from all over the world without having to spend a billion hours looking for those people online. The 3D printing market will die if the average person has to learn how to design in 3D in order to get what they need. That was the best part for designers....ability to engage with people wanting something that they offered. I for one bought a ton of N scale train accessories that I was unable to find anywhere else even from major manufacturers. The problem now is how can I reach out to the vendors who are now left to float around in internet space trying to keep their business alive? If Shapeways had been any kind of "ethical" company at all they would not have had a 15% off sale 2 weeks before closing. If that wasn't enough why could they not post a page online offering vendors a place to post their contact information so they could at least give them a fighting chance for survival. Can you say "take the money and run"? Just my thoughts.
Never knew they shut down....they must still be fulfilling existing orders.
I ordered two weeks ago and just received it a few days ago.
But compared to iMaterialize and Scuplteo which had comparable prices - Shapeways gave me much better customer service and their method of shipping was much better(importing from Canada).
If they really have shut down I'll have to change.
Buying my own printing machine is out of the question - there currently is still no 'home' printer that can get the same quality I got from Shapeways.
There is money in 3D printing - one just has to design and print things in applications that can't be challenged and is actually not a viable option for mass produced items. e.g.
Spending 5-7k on a tool/die rig - then 2-4k for an initial run - you now have just spent close to 10k on a single item that may or may not sell. That's for plastics.
For metals, like high polished brass, silver, etc. What, jumping on a plane to India, Mexico, China(Asia) to get a 'foundry' to 'mass' produce your items...the cost.
In many ways, 3D printing with companies with Shapeways is actually cheaper.
It's more of having unreasonable expectations on whether your product may be high selling in numbers or not.
I used Shapeways to prototype some of my 3d models as I couldn't afford a printer at the time and Shapeways was fairly reasonably priced, about £4 - £6 for small parts. 18 months later the exact same models in the exact same material was now 10 times the cost. So they lost my business and I bought a printer.
Thanks for the Shoutout. Absolutely! Building a full marketplace is one of the toughest businesses to be in. That is why we opted for the Etsy and Shopify Integration Route. That way we can print and ship items for the sellers (What we do well). And Etsy/Shopify can help with obtaining the customers (What they do well). That way the seller gets the resources of two organizations helping them rather than one single marketplace. (BTW we didn't know about the Mask Community either. We need to find those people)
Bummer. I used them for printing metal parts, nylon prints, mostly anything I couldn't make at home.
I never thought having someone else print for me to be cost effective. Especially while working on the model's functionality. I went through several versions to get the one that I like best. That would have cost a lot more than the $300 I paid for my printer. The self-taught CAD lessons along are uncalculatable. Plus, I own the models.
CAD is becoming as ubiquitous as word processors and following a similar timeline.
Owning and iteratingon your own designs is also worth several times as much as the printer and time spent, especially for someone like me that's looking into uaing those designs commercially.
I like the analogy of relating the development of CAD to the development of word processors. If you hear me using that one day in a video, feel free to take credit for it.
Learning CAD has enhanced my ability to think in 3D. I'm able to visually work the idea in the 3D space in my mind just like I would in the program. An invaluable tool.
I started a small company doing prototyping and I found that after I completed the work, the client would buy a 3D printer and start doing the prototyping themselves. There was no repeat business and the money dried up pretty quickly. Ultimately, if you need 3D printing you're going to do it in-house. Furthermore, the printing part is easy. It's the modeling that's the hard part. To get a quality, watertight STL you need to have a good background in modeling complex parts. That takes many years of using 3D software which is some of the most complicated software available. Then you have to account for materials, shrinkage, various surface finishes and a lot of unexpected issues. It's no wonder Shapeways couldn't make it. The margins just aren't there.
" There was no repeat business and the money dried up pretty quickly. Ultimately, if you need 3D printing you're going to do it in-house."
What kind of printers were you using?
I can't afford the 6 figure machines that give the results they do.
These home machines simply don't cut it.
@@babajaiy8246 We had Stratasys machines. I don't remember the exact model but they were about $15K ...
The quality you can print from relatively low cost 3D printers is so much better than it was when Shapeways started up. It's not surprising to me that this business model didn't survive.
it would have helped more if Shapways didn't remodel their business plan, they screwed a lot of people when they chose to hide the marketplace from their website
@@thomaswakefield6889 It seems like an odd choice. Giving people *less* reason to use their services. Maybe they just got tired of dealing with people.
I can relate.
I can see how the lack of vetting of the designs could lead to some angry customers for some of the more mechanically demanding designs. It took me a while with my own personal printer to learn what I could "get away with" mechanically with a 3D print. Little things like the orientation of the print on the bed make a huge difference in the strength of the part.
"The quality you can print from relatively low cost 3D printers is so much better than it was when Shapeways started up."
My experience is the opposite.
There is no home 3D printer that can deliver the same quality of print that comes out of a 6 figure cost machine.
As much as everyone has been saying how expensive they were, I could not find anyone cheaper for full color printing. I used them for color landscapes and city scapes, while using my own resin printers for plain white. There aren’t that many places that offer full color nylon MJF or gypsum ColorJet, and every time I looked for alternatives, Shapeways had the lowest price per cubic centimeter.
I use professionally 3D printed steel and Shapeways was waaaay to overprices, and delivery times where way too long.
And form a professional way, ordering true a website isn't the most easiest. Btw the article says they seized operation but nothing on their website says so.
A lot of people are saying orders are going unfulfilled.
Shapeway was so pricy to have something made. 6 years ago I planned to have something printed but needed 60 of them and at the time I only knew Shapeway offer such service. They wanted to charge like 15$ a piece without shipping so I scrubbed the idea. A few years later I found exactly the same thing I wanted on Aliexpress done in injection molding at fractions of Shapeway price and that was what I went with. 3D printers got so much better and cheaper these days and I don’t see the reason the go to Shapeway any more. Plus nowadays we have 3D print service behind the Great Wall and they ship to you at lower cost.
SHAPEWAYS helped me see the potential in 3D printing. My logo is based off a half mask model I made from re-working a model rip of Jason voorhees mask from MKX! The low polygons gave it a cool look actually and I thought to myself that I could make any physical object on my computer! This was way back in 2018 I think and since then I’ve taught myself how to 3D model in Blender (because it’s free and open source so I can use it forever without issue) .
There are other services out there, from 3d printing to CNC'ing. But you will pay for it.
If you need just basic 3d printed stuff, buy a printer or find someone with a consumer printer.
If you need professional level parts you need a professional printer. Shapeways offered that at a fairly reasonable price. Consumers think its expensive but its really not. I have been involved in design/engineering/manufacturing for 20 years now and it is not what people think! When I tried to come up with a business plan of what I thought their model was (before knowing they contracted out) I was blown away how Shapeways could do it at the price they were.
I feel like part of the problem is that most people who would take advantage of the service are also the types to eventually buy a cheap 3d printer and just do it themselves.
@@KertaDrake i agree. However those cheap solutions never end up being a comparable solution.
@@KertaDrake i agree. However those cheap solutions never end up being a comparable solution.
@@3dpprofessor True, but it won't stop people from trying. I started with a cheap one and spent more time prying failed prints from the plate than actually printing. Once you get a good result, it's wonderful though!
I never stopped using Shapeways for replacement parts for my boat or the engine. I could design and print custom throttle linkage adapters or portal dogs.
I have used them several times. I thought they were a bit on the expensive size, but since I rarely need something printed, they were always a great service for me anyway. It will be interesting to see if there will be someone else to take over that market share.
Thanks for your view on this. I'm glad I use my printers to experiment and learn, not make money. I have made things on request for people, friends, and try not to charge for them, because any realistic price would be too high for the time and work involved. I do special projects to learn new techniques and software
I believe Bambi labs and others have democratized 3d printing so much that there is not suffice to margin in this kind of service to act as a printer brokerage.
As you point out there was no value add aside perhaps from being a repository.
There time had come as is usually the case for those that choose not to evolve in a rapidly evolving market.
I'm not sure that the home market completely negated the value of a 3D printing service completely. Shapeway's 3D printers are capable of printing geometries that FDM 3D printing can't touch. But it definitely took a chunk out of their market share.
3D printing is a big part of model railroading. If it was a new cover for your engine or printing a new rolling stock car. But what was really cool was those who made specialty vehicles for HO or N Scale layouts - now that Shapeways is gone, there is no way for me to continue my relationship with these printers/designers.
Yes, I was planing to buy some 009 models and had started to plan a layout based specifically on them. So much for that idea.......
I never used their marketplace, but I did use them for printing things that were too big for the common desktop printers as single piece. They weren't bad price-wise for that, but the metal printing seemed high in the era of lost pla, etc casting.
Just about everyone at my local gaming store has a 3d printer. We go crazy for this stuff. The only thing I really went to shapeways for was stuff like the "ultra frosted detail" prints or the occasional metal print. A guy at my D&D group had a custom mini printed in metal. The ability to access the high end printers is the real loss here.
Shapeways to me was a way to 3D print things with machines I could not afford. So when I design a custom part for my car for example, I can FDM print a test part. I can even resin print a mostly functional part but it would get brittle over time.
So I would do all of my own r&D on my parts and then have shapeways make one out of aluminum for me.
This is especially good for small parts with geometry that would be a little more complicated to machine.
Compared to having somebody machine it out of aluminum it's substantially cheaper. It's even cheaper than paying somebody for a low volume aluminum casting.
Thankfully there are other places today that I can have my aluminum part added to their system and as long as I'm willing to wait, they will just kind of stick it in with whatever other prints they're running and I can get it for roughly the same price.
But it was nice being a normal customer with good turnaround time versus being the cheap extra job that's being thrown in with the real work.
Dude! I still have Stikfas from the original run!! I loved those
I think that with the current crop of 3D printers starting to get to the point that they are relatively fast, easy to use, and affordable people are starting to make the transition to buying and using a 3D printer. With that a lot of people are trying to jump into becoming a home business and making items to sell at craft shows and cons. The problem is there is a huge overlap in the products sold and varying quality.
I have a fleet of 3D printers that I use in my business, but they are a tool in the tool box used along side everything else. Do I make and sell those articulating toys that everyone else makes and sells? Yes, but it’s less the 1% of my total inventory and the idea is that people come to my booth at cons to see what we are working on. Most of those items are large and expensive catering to the cosplay and collectible crowd. Having smaller items available tends to lead to residual sales after people view the items on display in my booth. We also don’t solely rely on 3D printed, scratch built and other hand made items. We have a wide selection of unique licensed merchandise as well.
At the end of the day it’s all about finding a niche and focusing on it and building it out. If everyone keeps doing the same thing everyone else does you rapidly find the market flooded with the same or similar items.
I've used it for Transformers accessories in the distant past, but nowadays it's just way cheaper, faster, and easier to buy 3d printed parts off of eBay.
Bummer. On rare occasions, I needed a part I couldn't print, and it was worth a few bucks. The marketplace thing was useless, but the printing service was useful.
11:17 For that you still have options.
I'm actually not surprised. I wasn't strong armed, but I was forced to use their services last year. The prices were nudging extortive
Not Dead just in FLUX.... hope to share soon... cheers!
I used shapeways to make sandstone statuettes for my and my gfs anniversary each year. I loved them, but for the prices, they just weren't an option for pla/abs/resin, especially since the local library has a printer, and I got myself one. What I was fasinated by though, and would have loved, was there metal options. But again, the prices were just too much. I think it's possible to make money, but unless you have a unique design, or a specific requirement, it's just cheaper and eaiser to get something already made.
I am in 3D printing for over 10 years now and I have never heard of Shapeways.
Surprising. And now there's no Shapeways to hear of.
I know there are lots of people in the model train community who are hurting by the loss of Shapeways. There were lots of incredible designers like Teebee who had a plethora of 3D models for sale. Not to mention the modelers who used their brass casting service. Tom Knapp who makes incredible brass train models, I have a video on him, is really struggling to find another company that can do things to the same degree that Shapeways could. I am not sure what the future holds, but I know I am trying to figure out an alternative way of doing things for the future.
My issue with Shapeways was that you could never talk with a live Customer Service rep if you had an issue with one of their printed items. The only way to reach them was through email. That kind of service just doesn't work for me.
As I've understood it, the reason shapeways went bankrupt not because of lack of demand but some managers couldn't accept that they were in a niche market, thus taking on more debt to get the company to grow. But you can't just grow a niche market.
JLCPCB can do everything Shapeways could and more, and is less expensive. They have more materials and even do CNC milled metal.
But they don't have the marketplace do they?
From what I´ve heard its also a big problem for the people that sell 3D printed jewelery. shapeways offered many more processes than any other supplier I know. gold, silver, ceramic...
Also I have the feeling the marketplace was not dead at all. I only had one thing up there (bit holder for a quite outdated makita drill) and still got a few euros every few months.
While I used Shapeways, their pricing was super high. Other options were always considered first.
As a Transformers fan I've used Shapeways a few times, in order to get small upgrades on my figures. There's still 3rd party companies making stuff the traditional way (with molds), but they also tend to be pricey and they lump their upgrades together in a box where I would rather just have one upgrade. Truth be told, I haven't really thought about Shapeways in a while. Hasbro has been making better Transformers (as in true to the character models from the show) lately, and that might be part of it.
I guess I missed out on that phase of 3D Printing. I never heard them. To have a marketplace for things like this you need buyers, producers and sellers. It sounds like they didn’t woo the producers with reasonable prices, they themselves weren’t able to produce at volume profitably, and the overpriced their stuff to the too few buyers that they had running around the place. It really just failed to hit critical mass.
i.materialize is still around. Just use them. They've been around longer too.
I used jlpcb not only can they print in metal (not including gold or the finer metals like shapeways) but their clear prints feel like a resin cast and are clear and not this werid semitransparency, granted you could do the sanding and resin casting yourself but if you are prototyping might as well get clearness on the parts that need it
Designers design, printers print, consumers buy, and Shapeways put them together easily.
If only they could have priced them better, I think.
yes it's to bad they outsourced much of their printing, which is where most of the money they should have made went to.
@@thomaswakefield6889 Well, and then there's shipping.
There a certain irony to the fact that 3d printing means we can bring manufacturering closer to the consumer, and yet it wasn't close enough. But another part of the problem was that they were using these high end machines that were expensive to own and operate.
Shape ways for me my first 3d prints, I was till suing them for my Etsy jewelry pieces, now I have to find an alternative
As a 3D artist one of my clients had me model stuff which he would print and sell with Shapeways. Now he's stuck looking for an alternative.
@@3DJapan I'm curious what kind of things you were making for him.
@@3dpprofessor Replicas of movie props from old James Bond films, Planet of the Apes, the Batman TV series, stuff like that.
audio isn't synced, but it's still a good vid ;) This is sad- hopefully another Company will fill the void.
Protolabs I think followed a better business strategy showing the offerings of 3D printing alongside other manufacturing techniques to give users the ability to choose what process to use for their prototypes.
I'm a designer with a shapeways and THIS is how I found out about it closing? 😂
I loved shapways for what it was since i could just rely on nyself for getting designs out there in the physical since i mostly expiernced betrayal with other partners.
Years back i was playing with learning solidworks and zbrush, it was always so neat to be able to just send a design off and have it printed (and it was just a hobby curiosity novelty and i was making one-offs so the prices didnt bother me much, in fact i made it a game to try to manually do weight reduction on my models and optimize the price) their color sandstone printing option was really neat, and it's sort of sad to think if I get back into doing that the option is no longer there because they made great prints, though that might be a reason to start printing myself (after the million other things haha)
11:17 You've still got options.
How is it that by the time the kids are older or mature, the nest has been swept free of the man's hobby. In the shed indeed.
@@CraftedChannel the next?
@@3dpprofessor Sorry, nest. The home.
I had some stuff cast out of metal by them and now I don't know who else I can go to for that sort of thing. I didn't need to have conversations with anyone there, they just sent me stuff made out of silver and I quite liked the idea of making something out of gold at some point
It hit the RC 1/10 and 1/6 scale items too. Now I have to learn how to use a 3d printer, that is after I buy one.
Yeah i.cant even imagine the mess of quality control up and down the supply chain. Good video - terrible comparison of shapeway and TH-cam as platform. TH-cam is a delivery mechanism - you control the creation of your content
It is also a loss for other processes like shared CNC-resources and metalprinting for non-commercial-users
I personally don't believe the fact they were not designing parts thus relying to others led them to failure.
Although I think they had (correct me if I am wrong) design services as well.
On the other hand I did not know they outsourced stuff to be 3d printed. Well that's a thing.
The biggest issue was the unreasonable prices.
Another thing I did not like was frequent price changes as far as Etsy was concerned.
You had to adjust every time your prices for every change they made and for each one of your parts. That was annoying.
In the end I do believe their concept was pretty good. Their 3d previews and analysis of your part were something special & the marketplace idea was helping both designers and their company to grow.
PS: Actually there is another same concept platform with marketplace. It's i.materialise. I firstly had my few stuff there before I uploaded in shapeways.
1/600, 3mm wargame models. Some great shops gone. Big shame.
That Edison "quote" is probably apocryphal.
Shapeways failed for lack of scope. PCBWay seems to have a better handle on that, but I don't understand how their pricing is sustainable, at least on circuit boards. They can make me a dozen boards for less than I can source the materials... #notsponsored.
I would like to know what will happen to my order I made just two days before they decided to shut down!
@@tinaphillips7239 hope you can get your money back.
@@3dpprofessor that’s what I’m working on getting done. I honestly don’t know if I will though bc there is no one there anymore and it is 100% shut down.
I got my order a few days ago....I suspect if they really are closing, it seems they are attempting to fulfill existing orders.
@@babajaiy8246 I made my order two days before they ceased all operations. I won’t be getting my order bc it would have taken up to two weeks to finish what I ordered then it would have shipped to me.
@@babajaiy8246I put in my order just two days before they ceased all operations. It would have taken at least two weeks for them to have my order completed and then shipped. It’s been three weeks and nothing. I won’t be getting my order and most likely won’t be getting my money back from said order. Everyone is gone from the company, customer service, workers, the CEO, the COO, and the CFO
I used shapeways to have my 3d designed rings printed in silver about 10 years ago. I had made 2 green lantern rings, a blue ,red and yellow lantern as well as an assassin's creed ring all in silver and I thought the prices were very reasonable.
At this stage of fixing it up, it's okay.
odd, didn't they charge about 10$ per gram of steel printing? that should really add up. maybe their problem was that no one ordered anything at their high prices?
Wish I had known this a while ago. I placed an order for a very specific part I needed but haven't heard anything from Shapeways or their customer service about it. I placed my order on June 25th, and they said it should ship around July 23rd. Today is August 4th, and my order still says "Processing" like it did the moment I ordered it.
I dont want to have to do it, but it looks like I'll need to submit a chargeback if they dont reply to my emails about when my order will be created or canceled.
3D hubs screwed the market when they dropped desktop printers for industrial printers, which hurt a lot of small printers hopeing to pay for their printers
@@3DPT ah, I remember 3dHubs.
The thing is 3D Hubs made the market. Then they discovered that when you let anyone fulfill your orders, quality goes down, customer complaints go up, and no ones happy.
Like I said, people are the worst.
I shoped shapeways as it was the beat way to get replacement part , weapons third part target masters for transformers. So while not affective it was still important to get millions into manufactoring , any just like it,?
I’m sad because I was going to order parts for my 350 scale model of the titanic that I’m turning into the Britannic
Shapeways doesn't need to exist anymore. 3D printers are just getting cheaper and cheaper and model makers can sell direct to customers.
There are so things, like metal or full color 3d printing, that the machines they provided were good for.
Must be Hot, lots of Midges flying at top of this video :)
@@3D_Printing should have rekeyed the green screen.
@@3dpprofessor LOL, one of your Great videos, helpful
And what is happening to all the designs that were up on the website, both publicly for sale as well as the private designs?
That's another question that needs answering.
I mean shapeways has been "shutting down" for a while now. Slant 3d's channel been talking about it for a months now they had way to much money tied up in their machinery and the lead times was weeks no one can keep a 3dP business going that way
well, I ordered a bunch of sls prints from them a couple of years back because I needed exact tolerances. today I feel that they would have been an alternative to pcbway because asia import fees are heinous in scandinavia.
edit: Edison PATENTED the lightbulb, stories differ on wether he invented it... or anything at all.
Thanks for the video.
I disagree with you on a few points in your analysis of Shapeways, I created UNIQUE models for other model railroaders.
Shapeways was my showcase of what I could 3D CAD and not having to do all the maintenance and tinkering with a 3D printer at home and having money come into my bank account occasionally was really wonderful and fun to see when someone had bought from me.
I had "only" been a designer with a shop on Shapeways for 13 years, I will miss Shapeways, as long as God allows Ukrina to burn I cannot use 3D printing services in China because it fuels the seed interest and after that I am loose in my country
There's always doing it yourself.
I tried shapeways a few times for quotes, and for basic designs, it just wouldn't be viable. Even at volume, a whole constructed part I make and sell for about 17, couldn't even get the main body printed (SLS) for 25 to 30.
So I would not be able to even sell items at cost because I would price myself out of the market.
TL;DR: shapeways was too expensive, unless you were selling something for massively more than the printed cost.
The Uber of 3D Printing
More like Uber is the Shapeways of driving.
What ais the particle like effect above the X1 carbon?
Probably just some janky greenscreen action
Some janky green screen action.
They shut down? Their website is still up. Wonder why they have not shut the website down.
I have taken a lot of my printed toy items that were on Shapeways have them printed with cheaper online printers and sell them in other online stores.
The problem is I can't keep everything that I've designed, over 1000 designs, in stock in every material and color! I just print out a few of my hottest items and hope they sell.
Are you from St George by chance?
I work there.
@@3dpprofessor cool I grew up there. I'm gonna fly my 3d printed 747 at the RC field down there next month. Wanna come?
@@HM3DVIDEOz You should swing by the St. George Library and come say hi in the makerspace some time. That's probably where I'm going to be when you're at the RC field.
Is there a dripping video for paid members?
Huh?
Shapeways was overpriced and awful service. RIP.
Nobody mentioning that Slant3D might be able to fill part of this gap?
Slant3d is a different technology. But, I suppose at this time anyone could open up a marketplace.
Literally first time I have heard of Shapeways, clearly won't be missed. This sector is packed with competition so not at all important. Looking at their website its trash you need to fill in a form by hand to get a quote...lol...the competition just let you upload your design and get to work straight away.
They reopening as Manuevo one office in Europe that will handle all orders so not dead just downsized
Are they shipping them all from Europe?
@@3dpprofessor currently the reopen office needs to make money to buy back the old market place and what not
@@jboy667 Ah. So not happening yet, and may still not happen.
Good luck, I guess.
If anybody needs this service, we can print at scale. We have two brand new desktop metal printers.
And we have better engineering experience and wisdom than xometry
Better than Xometry? That's a big claim. Xometry are pretty good IMHO.
the European office is starting back up check facts
Hey, that's good to know.
They hadn't announced that when the video was made. Check the dates.
@@3dpprofessor i know my check facts was for a follow up video
why are you green screening yourself into your own printer room?
1) Because the room I'm in isn't really worth filming.
2) The printer room is noisy, as the printers are usually running.
3) I like the background.
The site is still up, so...
Yes, but can anyone order anything? I'm getting reports of orders going unfulfilled.
@@3dpprofessor when I posted, the marketplace et el was still up. It seams the site has now been taken down "for maintenance".
Or not, I reload the page and it's working again.
@@3dpprofessor I don't know, but the marketplace is still up.
Yeah the model is not likely to come back anytime soon. The main thing 3D printing is used for is to improve the quality and efficiency of regular mass production--so 3D printing helps move the goalposts for making this model viable! So if we were in a world where a $20K machine could 3D print an entire working iPhone 4, working iPhone 4s would be McDonald's toys and no one could make money just printing and selling such junk.
Classic rent-seeking behavior, but now with robots!
Maybe not rent seeking exactly, as it did still require a lot of effort to make things, even if the robot is doing most of the heavy lifting.
@3dpprofessor My bad, I was making a joke after you mentioned Utah, but your reply makes it clear it wasn't funny. Sorry about that.
?
@AndrewWholeaway He's referring to the fact that as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I'm expected to donate a tithe of my income to the church. And while whether or not I do is entirely between me and my bishop, I don't mind saying I am a full tithe payer.
That's probably why the Lord has blessed me. Windows of Heaven, my friend.
@@3dpprofessor
🤣 not sure implying god is open to bribes is the way to go 🤣
@@andrewholdaway813 I ain't implying anything. He said so. Old Testament. Malachi 3:10 "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."
@@3dpprofessor
🤣 OK (you prob need to lighten up on this subject though)
I see OP, who I was actually poking, has withdrawn his remark anyway.
and there lies the failure - distributed "anything" usually fails because COST-SELL=PROFIT - when will u all understand - went same way as voodofx etc... 3d printing as a business is not viable (i know - there are always great exceptions!) but in general dont think u are going to buy a cheap $300 printer and make tons of money - get a job! :)
Wish I understood what you meant by COST-SELL=PROFIT.
@@3dpprofessor business basics: cost-sell=profit if that equations fails on the profit end - poof gone