Greetings Y'ah | makexyz.com

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Greetings Y'ah

posted in Community by sybaritestudio

Awesome Nathan!!! this is ever so cool... a community to share our collective experiences/inquiries. I'm in Austin, too.

Been printing for awhile now...it in itself can be challenging.. I have found that the interaction with client not quite versed in the world of 3D printing thinks it's magic... Maybe it's because of all the hype surrounding the 3D printing machines... Yet, what I've observed is the lack of knowledge and/or expectation about the print set up and time... in other words...given a .stl file which is small ie: action figure and yet is complex, it will take some time to be printed. If the print required using support that too is time invested in removing the supports and making sure that print looks good... These are things that I do prior to sending the finished print to the customer.

Does anyone at MakeXYZ community do such a thing? or do they just mail the print as is?

In either case, I'm curious since when I use my ShopBot, I invoice my clients for all aspect of their finished product which includes the machine tooling and finishing of the product.

Thanks in advance for your input.

10 years, 6 months ago

augustaht - Yes! lack of awareness that many 3D models require support material when printing is another good one for @makerbeck: http://www.makexyz.com/f/96af397461383593868ff6a4ae5909a4

There's a misconception that makerbots and the like are magic boxes. Which they kind of are -- though magic boxes that require support material.

I usually clean off the support material before giving to the customer. I like delivering a great finished product.

10 years, 6 months ago

3dcgmodeler - about time...... where is the beer machine again....

:)

10 years, 6 months ago

3dcgmodeler - Actually I ask the customer about the support on the print, sometimes the support material adds a little bit of Support for shipment.. I have mailed objects with support attached so they are not damaged during shipping.

10 years, 6 months ago

printedsolid - Usually with objects requiring a lot of support material effort, I will invoice it separately to add a processing fee. Glad that Nathan added the invoicing feature a while back.

@3dgcmodeler - how was your customer response when you left the support attached? I think that is an interesting idea, but am worried that I might get some dissatisfied customers who accidentally break their parts.

10 years, 6 months ago

show 3 more comments

moxie3d - Thanks to all for sharing such helpful info! I typically remove the supports before shipping and use bubble wrap. I haven't had any problems to date. However, moving forward I'm going to offer a "finished" and "unfinished" price because if there are a lot of supports 1) it takes time and labor to finish, and 2) if you send it "as is" right off the printer, customer expectations have to be set correctly up front.

10 years, 6 months ago

sybaritestudio - I agree @moxie3d, I did a print http://s3.amazonaws.com/makexyz/things/376/photos/eac67e3837f5f758c340e54a4c6f6462.jpg of a Lynk figure and it's over an hour carefully removing all the support and since I had already accepted print at a give price I took a loss and instead educated the customer with the above photo for future orders. The customer was quite happy when the package arrived, sent me a lovely thank you email.

Still the lack of information on the process and what's involved for the finish continues. Whenever I talk about 3D Printing, the responses are like can you do this.... or I want you this... no thoughts about the 3D modeling, creation of the stl file, the set up time, print time, clean up and finish time.

It reminds me of the Jetsons, with a push of a button the item appears magically. Maybe one day but for now it's humans making such items happen with the help of technology.

10 years, 6 months ago

jms3dprinting - I would like to have a customer education page for first time buyers so they understand the limitations of 3D printing. Thin sections, lots of support driven by overhanging portions, etc would be good example files and folders for folks to know. The hype of 3d printing implies you can make anything someone can model which is not true. And poor modeling can create problems I can't fix at the stl level so the customer must modify the original file based on comments or photos I send them. Can really slow the "rapid" in rapid prototyping.

10 years, 4 months ago