Are there any other website that allow you to have your design printed for a price, similarly to what Shapeways does, or do they pretty much own that market?
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Are there any other website that allow you to have your design printed for a price, similarly to what Shapeways does, or do they pretty much own that market?
Well you also have a 3Dhub or something if i recall correctly,
Its a market system where everyone with a printer can sign up, and other people without printer can give you a STL and some money, so you can print and ship it.
After that there are also more professional services
Example: http://www.sculpteo.com/en/
Just google 3D print service and you should hit a few ^^
Another newcomer to cloud printing was at the NY Maker Faire called Kraftwurx (http://www.kraftwurx.com/) for printing services in the cloud. They offered access to multiple types of 3D printers.
Here you go....
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...63408001_n.png
As pointed out there are several others, with shapeways being the largest. Also popping up are location based services that will connect you with local companies that have printers. As well as reverse auction sites where you have printers under bid each other for you job. Obviously there are numerous people with abs printers on these sites, but it's not hard to find a printer with color sandstone or nylon (swf) near you.
^ Right. Not so much companies, as individuals though. Something like http://www.makexyz.com/.
I just got a print back from a guy here in LA, and all I can say is that it was horrendous. So bad, I even had to get a refund. Buyer beware- you'll get quality that is all over the map.
RE: Material selection- yup. I mean, you saw my other post. http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...=1243#post1243 :)
Thats a cool site: http://www.makexyz.com/, i think I'll add my printer(s) too if I have them.
There is also such a site: http://www.3dhubs.com (Its the same concept.)
Here is a new one I saw. http://pinshape.com/
I haven't really checked it out yet, but seems to be something similar to Shapeways.
There is also https://www.ponoko.com/
Sculpteo is really good. They are a little pricier than shapeways I believe but their turnaround time is a lot quicker and their products IMO are of higher quality.
See the thing is that Shapeways is so large so they can have lower prices. On top of this, they have the most experience, so I would imagine that their quality is better than most other companies that are just getting started or only print a few items a day.
@Pattycakes Your right and wrong all at the same time. Most commercial printers (like myself) are on par with Shapeways for pricing for parts. Even slightly less as for the most part we don't have setup fees. In all likely hood, Shapeways will beat an independent printer on shipping cost, but your independent will have your part to you in days, not weeks (like SW). As for quality, your way off base here. SW is in essence a sausage factory, pumping out as much as they possibly can. Tolerances are jacked up so parts can be removed without any (little) concern of parts breaking. And as with most companies, the grunt work is done by people making minimum wage. How much they care about your parts is up for speculation. I'll put any sandstone part I print up against a SW part and beat them hands down (even on my worst sleep deprived day). This is without even considering that I can do a mater finish (no build lines and smooth like glass). SW does have a store and several thousand visitors that no independent can touch though.
Don't get me wrong, I don't hate SW and love the push they are putting on 3D printing, I just don't consider them "high end printers"
We've worked with the folks at http://thingify.com on some projects.
@JohnA136. Thank you for bringing up kraftwurx. I Would just like to add the fact that we have a TON of materials to choose from. Over 50!
Tried SW a few times, seems to take a while to get the parts.
Once you know what you are doing, MakeXYZ seems the best results per dollar.
Like the Sculpteo part-viewer the best.
ProtoExchange.com - seems a bit more engineering-ish.
My experience with imaterialise has been really good.
To my knowledge they offer more materials than shapeways and the quality of their prints is unmatched. Also, you dont even need an account for seeing their princes: http://i.materialise.com
WOW - just uploaded a model I made for my mates conservatory. Just a decorative end piece. weighs about 5 grams cost me 8 pence each to make with decent filament.
And the cheapest quote from imaterialise is £7.90 !
Oh man am I under charging for my sling bullet moulds.
So what sort of money does 3dhubs charge ?
The same thing I asked myself when I tried to choose one. So I had to read a little about them.
Conclusions:
Shapeways has a large variety of materials and better exposure; seems to be cheap, but slow.
iMaterialise has an even larger variety of materials, better quality for metal printing than shapeways, the order process is much easier and for orders over $99 shipping is free. But the delivery time can last from 5 days to a month and printing prices are higher.
Kraftwurx - same prices as Shapeways or similar. Many materials to choose from.
Sculpteo is very fast - only 3 days delivery term, but shipping is expensive and not so many material choices available.
hope this helps
:)
3dhubs is the cheapest because most of the printers there belong to individuals and very few to companies.
My experience with Makexyz has been mostly bad. I live in the Los Angeles, CA area and my first order was sent to a maker in Florida! Of course that meant having to wait a week to receive my order. On my next order, I selected a maker that had a high rating and was located a couple of cities away. That went pretty well. Within 3 days, I received my order through the mail. I placed a few more orders with this guy but then he got pretty busy and it was taking him longer to finish my orders. So I decided to find another "local maker" and found one with only 1 5-star rating. I placed the order with this "local maker" but the next day I got an email from makexyz that my order was placed successfully. But guess what. This maker again was in Florida! Again, I didn't get my order until a week later. Obviously, this thing started to irk me because not only did I have to wait longer for my order to arrive but I know that the "local makers" were being shortchanged by makexyz. But of course I had to make sure that I had been properly selecting a "local maker" when I was placing my orders. So 3 days ago, I placed another order to makexyz, this time I made sure I had proof that a "local maker" was selected and not someone in Florida. Well, no dice this time either. My order got sent to FLORIDA. Contacted their support dept and complained of which I got this response: "When a local maker is not able to pick up your job, it's routed to a maker that can. The goal is to get you your parts as quickly as possible." What about the hundreds or thousands of other "local makers" between California? This is an excuse of a "bait and switch" enterprise. A fraud.