FUD Repricing is now Live!
There is no need to re-upload your models to see the new prices.
Heads up, scale modelers and miniatures makers!
We have some
big news about our Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD) family: Starting the week of May 22, we’ll be rolling out a new pricing structure for FUD, followed by a new Ready to Paint finish, then a way for you to control the 3D print orientation.
These changes will make your products more affordable and easier to paint, while giving you greater control over the quality of your prints by empowering you to choose the way your models are oriented in the printer. Today, we’ll provide you with all the details on the pricing changes, and we’ll be rolling out more on Ready to Paint and 3D print orientation options in the coming weeks.
Beginning the week of May 22,
70% of products printed in FUD will become cheaper! Another 10% will remain the at current price, and for 20%, the price will increase.
Your markups will not change.
Here are the three major benefits you’ll see:
- You’ll start with lower prices, in response to your incredible creativity in the smallest scales (we’re halving the $5 startup cost, a win for t- and z-scale modelers)
- Lower-cost HO-scale and 28mm products, to better enable our biggest scale model community (we’re trimming your material cost, making bigger, denser products less expensive)
- Fairer pricing overall, achieved by aligning pricing with our production cost
(we’re moving on from the current, simple pricing structure that doesn’t take into account all the elements that actually affect the cost)
To reach these goals, the upcoming pricing structure introduces three new cost elements: Per Part, Support Material and Machine Space—in addition to the current Startup and Model Material costs, which will become considerably cheaper. Adding these components gives you
greater control over price and quality. This pricing structure also lays the groundwork for you to control the 3D printing orientation (more about this in near future).
At upload, our 3D model processing will automatically calculate the cheapest orientation for your model. Along with the vast majority of products, designs that take up less space, and those that require less support material during 3D printing, will become cheaper.
For further tips on optimizing your designs for cheaper printing in FUD, read this tutorial.
You’re probably familiar with our existing price structure, which has a $5 per-file fee, plus a cost per cubic centimeter. Our new pricing structure lowers those costs, and provides more transparency into what determines your cost:
Startup Fee
The startup fee applies to every 3D model and covers the labor involved with processing each order and 3D print, including checking your model for printability, post-processing your product, and quality checking before shipping.
Per Part Fee
There is also manual work associated with each part within your 3D model that includes:
- Planning the 3D print build. Each part is placed separately on the build platform.
- Sorting the parts after 3D printing and post processing. Sorting is manual work where our 3D printing engineers make sure all the parts are there, check their quality and pack them in your order.
The vast majority of 3D models in Shapeways have a single part. We found that we are overcharging these models to compensate for the models that had many–sometimes hundreds–parts in them. By introducing a startup and per-part fees, we are able to lower the startup cost for the single part models and price every 3D print fairly.
Model material
The model material is the cost of the material used that to build your product. This cost is significantly lowered in the new price structure, enabling you to design thicker and more durable products. This will also make sprueing parts affordable way to reduce price.
Support material
Support material is the wax that’s used to secure your model to the build platform and support negative angles and overhangs. The wax is melted away after 3D printing, but cannot be re-used. Some designs need a lot more support material than others. When your model is uploaded and automatically oriented for minimum price, the amount of support material needed and the corresponding price will be calculated.
With the launch of the new FUD pricing, 3D tools will introduce a support material visualization that shows how support material applies to your design.
Machine Space
The machine space is the footprint and the height of your model. This indicates how much space your model occupies in the 3D printer and how long it will take to print. To make our industrial grade 3D printing affordable to everyone, we pack as many models in the 3D print as we can.
The machine space is slightly differently for FUD than for Strong and Flexible Plastic due to differences in 3D printing technologies. Since FUD is produced by building up material from a build tray, all the models are planned on this 2D surface, where in Strong & Flexible models are planned in 3D space.
You can think of your model’s footprint as the shadow of your model when a light is placed directly above it. For models that have openings where parts can be planned inside, you will not be charged for that space since we can plan other parts in that space. Note, however, spaces that you may assume can fit parts inside may, in reality, be filled with support material. There will also be a “halo” calculated around the footprint since we cannot place parts directly in contact with one another.
The height of your model dictates how long it will take to print. As you can assume, the taller the model, the longer the build time. Additionally, as the height of your model increases, the packing density in the z-plane reduces. For these reasons, height is weighed more heavily than footprint in our machine space price. But, don’t worry, we will automatically orient your model so the tallest axis is oriented in the x-y plane.
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These changes will make pricing more fair by charging you more accurately for what you’re using. An upcoming expansion of finishing and print orientation options will complete this round of major improvements to the FUD family of materials. But, we’ll continue evolving our material offerings and coming up with new ways to meet your needs. We know that any price changes can be scary, but we hope that you’ll enjoy (and make the most of) having greater control over your costs.
Examples of changed prices (provided by Stony Smith Design’s):
ArroWedge Container Load - HOscale
https://www.shapeways.com/product/LF83JXZEM/
$82.92 → $66.28
Bucyrus WB150B Crane - Nscale
https://www.shapeways.com/product/6FP4RQTW8/
$44.52 → $22.51
Carousel - Zscale
https://www.shapeways.com/product/PSGJQJ8JY/
$15.10 → $10.90
Flatcar Load - Fraction Tower - Nscale
https://www.shapeways.com/product/Y6YH9ZX6S/
$22.02 → $40.68
EDIT: New pricing image added May 16th