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How do!

Starting the thread, but have no horse in the race. Apologies if the link isn’t a reputable source.

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/shapeways-bankrupt-5m-rescue-bid-rejected-231387/

given their reason for existing vanished when domestic resin printers became available at a reasonable price I'm amazed they still existed

Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

this is very true, though the smell isn't as bad as is often made out - you can tell its there though

I doubt many of us could paint fast enough to keep a printer running 24/7 though, its very good however if you are part of a group where a few have them and, for a small consideration, will print bits - coffee prices etc

I think their main model was designers being able to upload STL to shapeways and people buy the prints instead of selling the STL directly

IIRC the Star Fleet Battles model range was on shapeways, I looked at the prices

I laughed

I never went back

Their long term use of UPS (at sky high prices) to ship tiny components was insane and put so many people off.

I wonder what will happen to it - there's still lots of designs available there that have never moved to print at home STL services.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

this is very true, though the smell isn't as bad as is often made out - you can tell its there though

I doubt many of us could paint fast enough to keep a printer running 24/7 though, its very good however if you are part of a group where a few have them and, for a small consideration, will print bits - coffee prices etc

Many people simply don't live anywhere with adequate ventilation, and running without it is a bad idea, especially if you have children.

 The Phazer wrote:
Their long term use of UPS (at sky high prices) to ship tiny components was insane and put so many people off.

I wonder what will happen to it - there's still lots of designs available there that have never moved to print at home STL services.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

this is very true, though the smell isn't as bad as is often made out - you can tell its there though

I doubt many of us could paint fast enough to keep a printer running 24/7 though, its very good however if you are part of a group where a few have them and, for a small consideration, will print bits - coffee prices etc

Many people simply don't live anywhere with adequate ventilation, and running without it is a bad idea, especially if you have children.

yes you certainly want venitlation, no doubt about that, and gloves, and somewhere safe to store the resin, IP etc, and it can make a mess. the fact they are, gradually, starting to add suitable heaters to the things is a blessing

and yes the postage costs were ridiculous

Their pricing model for printing models was weird. At one point it was cheaper to design stuff as separate pieces, at other moments (totally arbitrarily) everything had to be in a single piece. It just became way too annoying to keep up with that all the time.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

It's also not just a want; you have to have the spare room/shed/garage to set it up and run it safely. Even then there's a bunch of health concerns and safety considerations and then there's actual printing itself whcih is a hobby in its own right. You have to be ready to problem solve; self learn; deal with failures; etc.... Consumer printers are improving and gaining more features (like heaters* and the new Saturn 4s are getting tilt screen separation), but its still not for everyone.

I think the real issue for them isn't the home use of 3d printers, its dozens of little companies on etsy and the like doing it themselves. Yes the quality is insanely variable - some don't have a freaking clue and will ship uncured resin or part cured or on the supports cured and a whole bunch of other daft to outright dangerous practices. But there's enough running quality services that its likely undercut Shapeways in a big way


*though I don't know how many are proportional or regular thermostatically controlled


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

this is very true, though the smell isn't as bad as is often made out - you can tell its there though

The issue isn't smell, but the dangerous nasty organic particles (that don't smell)

As someone who has no interest in getting into 3D printing myself (its a hobby unto itself) I have used shapeways in the past. Mostly for chapter specific shoulder pads etc, but they were always a second choice due to high shipping costs.

This is a double blow as earlier this year the ebay sellers i regularly used (mars forges and malistone) were closed down due to legal threats from GW.

Maybe etsy sellers will pick up the slack now, but selection on there atm is much worse.

This is a major hinderance in my badab war projects.

I'm just glad I did not make that $300.00 order last week. Its too bad thought. I really wanted those World Eater combat shields.

Paste from the other thread

Yea Shapeways was obsolete 5 years ago, I assume any artist still using it to sell prints at this point must be psychotically afraid of STL piracy, you can literally buy a home printer capable of better prints for the cost of 5, maybe 10, 28mm models done by Shapeways. Them going bust can only be good, at least for our niche, as commercial sculpts move to cheaper printers with better tech, which is literally every garage printing service.

Thanks for starting this Mad Doc

Pasting from the X-Wing thread, these are from Shapeway's own press releases (referenced in the 1st post article)

https://investors.shapeways.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/98/shapeways-announces-definitive-agreement-to-sell-software

And as of May 22, 2024 they have 180 days to file paperwork with NASDAQ or they'll be delisted as an operating company:

https://investors.shapeways.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/99/shapeways-receives-nasdaq-notice-regarding-late-filing-of

Hope nobody's waiting on minis from there....

Several other places have sprung up where you can either sell the STLs, the final product or even both. I'll remember Shapeways being one of the first places that sold the printed product, but they just couldn't keep up with the rapidly iterating technology and it looks like it's become a self-inflicted millstone around their neck.

I'm hoping some of the vendors who were exclusive there migrate to other platforms, but if they already hadn't, they might have just been too stubborn to do so in the first place :( .

leopard wrote:given their reason for existing vanished when domestic resin printers became available at a reasonable price I'm amazed they still existed

Skinnereal wrote:Not everyone wants to get a smelly resin 3D printer of their own.
But I saw their prices. It's enough to make the leap, for anything past a couple of trips there.

Pretty much both. I got in on the first gen affordable resin printers but previously was using Shapeways twice for orders. I would have ordered much more but paying $15-20 plus $7+ for shipping for a 35mm human figure at the detail level equal to those starter resin printers' capabilities didn't make sense anymore. When I stopped printing myself during the pandemic, I looked into them again thinking that by that point when the third wave of resin printers had already hit that they'd have adjusted their business model but it wasn't the case and it would run me $30+ with shipping to get a single resin D&D figure. There are print farms out there using those mass market printers that could print it at half to 2/3 the cost shipped. Heck, one of the models I wanted to buy the STL for and print out through them was available printed, cleaned, and shipped for $15 on ebay from an independent seller who bought in on that maker's merchant tier.

They were a viable and valuable option back before those affordable resin printers when the only other "home" option was a Form Labs printer for a couple thousand dollars but they never adapted to the changing market place. I don't fault them for shipping costs through UPS as that's somewhat beyond their control (though I would have appreciated them giving customers options at a variety of price points) but they didn't keep up with the market. I haven't ever used them for larger scale models though, as a former trekkie, I had seen people happy with their service in years past for printing larger foot long or larger ship models at their lower cost/much lower detail level. I suppose with the larger format/plate resin printers that might not be viable either anymore. Their custom software to position the model and see how their washable support would interact was handy but it also showed me that their service AUTOMATICALLY significantly downgraded the detail of models you uploaded even at the highest level of detail they offered which came as a shock to me. Would that added detail have actually printed out? I don't know... but knowing that it had no chance at all stopped me from using their service the last time even if I were willing to pay the hefty price.

 Stormonu wrote:
I'll remember Shapeways being one of the first places that sold the printed product, but they just couldn't keep up with the rapidly iterating technology and it looks like it's become a self-inflicted millstone around their neck..

They certainly felt like a leader in making the technology accessible (to designers who provided their products, to consumers buying that product), but their prices and services fitted the niche exclusive market that existed when they started, instead of the current world were other places offer similar products and services at a fraction of the price (and as said, the Shapeways-exclusive designers will hopefully find other places for their wares; it would be a shame to lose them).

That said, I'm also very much in the camp of not having any interest in getting into 3D printing myself, and am perfectly happy to outsource that. Not for financial or health risk reasons, not (fully) out of time reasons, but just because it'd be a machine that would sit idle 350 days a year in my house, which feels like a waste of technology. I don't paint remotely enough to warrant a dedicated machine to make more minis, so will happily buy the occasional print instead if it's something good and not available in other forms.

For anyone who doesn't want to print at home, IME any random garage printing service on etsy will give you a better price than Shapeways.

I respect the service they did for the market in their heyday, but I have a dim view of artists who to this day insisted on only selling through it and I look forward to them being forced into licensing out to garage printers or selling STLs.

The really bad news is how many niche designs will be lost, because the sculptor never used another platform or doesn't consider the file worth reposting.

I get some really Arbites bits from them years ago, I hope I can get the STLs elsewhere.

There's a lot of non-gaming-miniature utility to Shapeways that folks here might not be as familiar with that'll be a huge loss for the market. The variety of materials available allowed for lots of other hobby/crafting uses and even small industrial/commercial applications if you just needed something super specific once in a while. Home resin printing certainly cut off a portion of their market, but Shapeways never really seemed like they were competing as much in that space anyway, with limited options for high-resolution detailed print materials, and certainly with their pricing. Access to durable or detailed metals was a huge thing for them that they've done nothing but raise prices on to an absurd degree. I've certainly seen my sales mostly dry up in the past six months or so, and they've changed their pricing model so many times in the past two years that I lost track of if I'm even doing it right.

Used them once recently for some specific heads for a project I was working on and that were hard enough to come by that the price was okay. Strangely I got to few (20 instead of 40) and they were quite forthcoming in the end reimbursing me the full price for all heads. Good thing I ordered some other stuff on my "meh, maybe sometimes in the future" list back then to ship together otherwise I would have missed out on those.

But yeah, the prices for most stuff were unreasonable. I don't have a printer myself, but there are enough 3D printing services online to print my designs or those I find interesting cheaper and in better quality.

leopard wrote:


IIRC the Star Fleet Battles model range was on shapeways, I looked at the prices

I laughed

I never went back

This was the start of my 3d printing rabbit hole.

Looked at the prices, choked, checked out Thingiverse and wondered how much one of them fancy 3d printers would cost...

Another case of take the money and run.

It wouldn't take much to make it profitable, and in the green. Either They just don't want to put in the effort, or they are just that incompetent.

Too bad, because people want 3D printed items. They don't all want top of the line 3D printers to do it with.
As to the pricing- THAT is their main issue. If they reduced the price to reasonable, set up a good distribution point and a good contract with FedEx, or any other transportation agency, and they would be in the green in a few months.

Hoping that some of the garage producers resurface someplace else. My other hobby (arguably my primary) is scale model building. There was a company on Shapeways called ETS35 that did a lot of WWII French subjects, especially detailing kits. Finding an after-market trench skid for an H-39 is pretty unlikely; this is where SHapeways came in for me. I put that project on the back burner, now I lost my chance. Hopefully they will find another venue.

There were, in addition, a lot of bits & detail pieces I would buy from there, things as obscure as Post-war US military trailer hitches.

I wonder how this will affect ADB & Star Fleet Battles? They were selling a lot of their ship designs through their store on Shapeways.

Damon.

I just heard from one of the owner of one of the Shapeways shops I have bought from before. This is terrible news. In particular for Star Wars and Star Trek tabletop gamers I think, there's whole communities that just had entire lines essentially yanked out from under them. Y'know I was just talking to a coworker two days ago that I was thinking about getting into small-scale Star Wars gaming-probably something about the closing of the X-Wing miniatures game that got my interest sparked again, but this pretty much kills the possibility of exploring that option at least in the short term.

Hopefully some of those artists can relocate their shops somewhere that's run a bit better than Shapeways and not too much will be lost, but I know this is going to hurt a lot of talented people in the hobby who's income at least partially hinged on Shapeways. Really awful.

 Prometheum5 wrote:
There's a lot of non-gaming-miniature utility to Shapeways that folks here might not be as familiar with that'll be a huge loss for the market.

I was just about to say this. I have a resin printer and an FDM printer, and I still used Shapeways a fair bit. They offered processes like multijet fusion that are still out of reach for enthusiasts, which allowed much more intricate parts than FDM but much stronger than resin. I had a couple of designs up in steel for functional components that need high durability. And the Shapeways marketplace made it easy to make designs available for sale to others with minimal workload.

For wargamers there's a lot less utility, but I have a couple of other hobbies that are going to be really hurt by this. There are other 3D printing services out there with comparable processes, but the storefront integration was huge.

Yeah, there were parts for modding action figures in materials I wouldn't be able to print in or wouldn't be durable enough for actual use if I did available and not sure where I'd be able to get some of those otherwise now.

Sad to see any company in this niche to stop doing what they do.

I expected this to happen to any company with traditional production of physical models... this race to the bottom, going for silly low prices trend the Virtual space is doing, will ultimately stink for everyone.
It's happening sooner than I expected on the digital front but will get worse I think.
Not a fan.

And the knock-on effects begin quickly:

Hero Forge wrote:Physical Product Update - To Hero Forge’s Valued Customers
Our physical production pipeline will be experiencing delays in the near term. Our primary distributor has ceased all business operations without notice or warning, and this sudden development requires the immediate launch of new distribution capabilities.
We understand how important our minis are to you, and we share your dismay over these unforeseen delays. Please rest assured that we are doing everything possible to mitigate the impact.
Our current plan is to transition all existing orders and any new ones to a new distributor within the next few weeks. However, due to the complex nature of our product, this process might take longer. Order delays of 4-6 weeks or more are expected. Our 3D Digital and STL Download products are still readily available and will experience no delays.
We deeply appreciate your patience and understanding during this challenging time. Our commitment to you and our business remains unwavering, and we will keep you informed of any significant updates.
Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Hero Forge Team

Big oof. That's not gonna be easy.

Although I don't particularly pity HeroForge for having the rug pulled from under them, they're pretty scummy themselves.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Big oof. That's not gonna be easy.

Although I don't particularly pity HeroForge for having the rug pulled from under them, they're pretty scummy themselves.

Out of curiosity, ???

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Big oof. That's not gonna be easy.

Although I don't particularly pity HeroForge for having the rug pulled from under them, they're pretty scummy themselves.

Out of curiosity, ???

Have some custom digital minis in the database that they won't let me re-download after having lost my local storage unless I pay for a second time... and it's not that they don't store the files, I can open them up in the editor just fine, but they delete the download link as if a customer's license for the minis times out after 6 months. It's a pretty novel experience for me as this sort of gak doesn't fly in the EU.

Unfortunate but not surprising. The cost was astronomical and their resin was always a bit pants. That said, their SLS plastic was decent for what it was and SLS printers aren't really accessible to home users just yet, so that is definitely a bummer.