Marbelup Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 Does anyone know the reason for the "ripple" effect which seems to be common with the Shapeways Frosted Ultra Detail material? It seems clear that the other problem with areas of rough surface are due to the wax support material, but I have not come across any explanation of what causes the ripple effect on the ends of some parts, while other parts seem "ripple-free". I measured the prominent ripples on a test part I received in October 2012, and the spacing came out to exactly 1/20" (1.27 mm), based on measuring 25 continuous ripples. This suggests to me that it is due to a mechanical misalignment or eccentricity in the z-axis of the printing maching, perhaps due to a screw thread positioner, or similar, with 20 threads per inch. I am not sure whether Shapeways do their printing "in-house" or contract work out to other firms, but maybe there are several machines in use for FUD prints and one or more machines have the defect which results in the ripple effect? If this is the case, it would seem to be a case of "pot luck" whether the part you order is rippled or not. I also hard the same part done in Shapeways Frosted Detail (FD) material, and that also had the same ripple effect with the same spacing. I certainly won't be ordering any more parts from Shapeways until there is some evidence of a consistent improvement in FUD quality. The diesel loco body I am working on will cost $200 in FUD. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
billbedford Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 The lines are parallel to the x axis, so the problem is more likely to be a blocked nozzle or an end of cartridge effect. The sort of thing that is common in ordinary inkjet printers that don't get enough use. Shapeways have three of these machines. One in New York and Two in Eindhoven. Shapeways will rebuild any piece you receive with this texture if you send a photo of your piece to customer services. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jim s-w Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 Isnt it just resolution? The technique isnt of high enough resolution (yet) for what people want it to do* Cheers Jim * yet meaning at a price people will pay. High end stuff costing thousands of dollars Is a whole different ball game Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
billbedford Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 The 'high end ' machines do not have as good a resolution as the ones we have been talking about. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Revolution Mike Posted November 26, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted November 26, 2012 Isnt it just resolution? The technique isnt of high enough resolution (yet) for what people want it to do* Hi Jim Nothing to do with resolution from what I've seen. If you look at Guy's LTF-25 prints or printed masters for Axlemotion bogies on the best prints there are no problems, but yet on the owrst prints the quality is really poor. It seems that Shapeways has a large variation in quality of print (of the same model) and as Bill says customers just have to be prepared to complain and ask for a re-print (or credit). Cheers, Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katier Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 It seems that Shapeways has a large variation in quality of print (of the same model) and as Bill says customers just have to be prepared to complain and ask for a re-print (or credit). Would it be fair to say their customer service is good enough that, other than time (yours in doing a photo for proof/sending request, there's in doing the reprint + delivery time), there is minimal problems with getting a reprint? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugsley Posted December 7, 2012 Share Posted December 7, 2012 Their customer service is very good and there is normally no problem getting a reprint. However, there is no guarantee that the reprint will be any better than the original..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marbelup Posted December 11, 2012 Author Share Posted December 11, 2012 Given that the Shapeways "ripple" problem is very obvious when it occurs, one might think that their QA processes might reject the part and organise a reprint without the customer having to ask for a refund/reprint. In other words, Shapeways are relying on customers to do the QA. Shapeways did offer me a credit, although they provided no explanation of why the problem occurred. I reordered the same part in Frosted Detail. The resolution was obviously less than FUD and it also exhibited a similar ripple effect, so it was also unusable. Somewhat surprisingly, the level of cooperation from their customer service person dropped suddenly when they learnt that I had painted the part, as they could no longer pursue an investigation, for reasons I can't fathom. I only painted it to see what the surface defects would look like on a finished model. As I used Tamiya paint, I was able to easily clean it off with meths, and I even sent Shapeways a photo with half painted, half cleaned to highlight the ripple effect with and without paint. I offered to clean all the paint off and return the part to them for closer examination, but they declined. I did point out that their website suggested painting FUD to bring out the full detail, so painting it was nothing out of the ordinary. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted December 20, 2012 Share Posted December 20, 2012 Their QA appears to be pretty minimal. I've just received some completely banana shaped polished prints badly marked at one end. Someone clearly took a totally banana shaped set of pieces and polished them without thinking 'this can't be right', and then shipped the results rather than reprinting it. 30 seconds of comparing the print to the digital version would have told them it was a catastrophic fail without needing to know anything about railways. It seems to be pretty dumb on their part bothering to polish clearly misprinted parts, then carefully pack and ship them. The print folk seem to have a sense of humour at least. I made the Wickham railbus window frames a bit too thin and the reject report notes said "The wires almost break when you look at it" Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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