Shapeways Omdömen 

I like the wide variety of available materials and the ease of uploading files. Prices are given almost instantly. Also shipping is mostly way quicker than originally estimated. I always use Shapeways for my 3D printing needs.

great and fast service and high quality of the printed pieces

Van alle 3D print bedrijven heeft Shapeways toch wel het fijnste klanten contact. In mijn model zat een kleine fout en voordat Shapeways het klakkeloos begon te printen hebben ze mij gecontacteerd met de fix, Super service!

Hierbij heb ik ook nog de mogelijkheid gehad om hem op locatie op te komen halen in plaats van verzendkosten te betalen.

Groetjes,
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Shapeways is just *great* ! it is a huge marketplace, driven by cool people who upload their 3d models for shapeways to print them on demand. It is great because:
- it has an enormous amount of objects to print
- almost all objects can be printed in at least two different qualities of plastic
- it is *VERY* fast
- the quality of the printed product is outstanding
I but often and Shapeways, and it is always a pleasure!

I'm using Shapeways as 3d printing service since long time. I've always had a good print quality and when it was not the case I was always able to request a reprint or a refund. Customer service is always ready to respond and help quickly. There is a lot of space for improve of course, as for example more constant pricing, possibility to organize 3d models differently. A B2B would be very appreciated, with the possibility to pay afterwords and to contact the team directly for specific requests. I will add some extra finishing for precious metal as for example sand blasted or brushed effect and do not work with a minimum price. If you design jewelry they are most of the time very small pieces, and with a minimum price you pay more for a small piece that for a big one. The indicated delivery time is most of the time longer that effective one, which is normally faster. Price - quality is okay if compared with other platforms.

I Love shape ways, as they have given me a way to visualize many game items and ships from my Star Trek universe based games Starfleet battles and Federation commander. The quality of their smooth detail selection is awesome and looks great when painted. I love the many options on materials so you can save money on an item that doesn’t mean as much or require really sharp optics but also very sharp high-quality is available for you. But also we are able to get the items in different scales and there’s so much selection in the site; so many people have their own designs and you can choose from among any of these people. Also you can have your own designs printed as some of my friends do. All together a very tight sight and I look forward to getting more miniatures from there. As well there are many different types of items that can be 3-D printed and therefore there are many choices are available. I am so glad that my favourite game company chose to publish their products on this site!

A great experience. Shapeways has delivered much faster than promised and the quality of the printout is well above the simple standard printers you have for home use or some of which are available from other suppliers. I am very satisfied.

Shapeways has made creating my jewellery designs easy and affordable. They have excellent customer service and are my number one pick for 3d printing and jewellery casting.

User friendly Website
Quick turn-around of products
Good range of materials
Friendly and helpful staff
Accurate prints.

I am working with Shapeways for more than 4 years now. Love their staff and customer support. Just had a little issue with new price ranges especially the shipping cost since I am a small company and I work on OnDemand pieces.

Steel metal print on Shapeways are not 100% good condition of parts.
I got a one part that it should be hold on the part but the hole is half cut not complete circle hole. Another order i got 3 mm bump on metal part which should not have a bump. I have to remove it by my self with cutter. So Shapeways metal print is not one hundred percent accurate.

I ordered a jewelry piece I created myself and it came out better than expected. The site was easy to navigate and the ordering process was simple.

Quality: Highest quality "smoothest" polyjet covered with support material fused to the print. About half cant be used. All require extensive post production scraping and sanding. "Versatile" plastic has mediocre detail but ok for larger things.
Price: Doubled and tripled over last year with quality going down.
Service: Sometimes reprint for free or refund, but other times claim that cracked or prints covered with fused plastic are within guidelines.

First of all, you have to pay before you even know if they will be able to print your object. If you can not, prepare to receive an email in which they will tell you that you need to change or correct some aspect of the piece.

The problem comes when you place an order for more than one object because if one can be printed it and another can not, then they will send you the one they can print before you can correct the other one. This way you will have to pay the shipping costs again.

On the other hand, in its web it says that they have a "print it anyway" service for some materials. In my case, an object that I wanted in polished brass had too much detail so it would get lost in the polishing process, so I told them to print it in unpolished brass (since this material entered the print it anyways service) and even so they did not keep their word.

Fortunately I have seen that imaterialise guys offer these services so I will try them because in addition to being something cheaper, it seems that they can print in higher quality (at least jewelry).

They altered a $1600 order without consent or authorization rendering the entire order useless. They've refused to be cooperative in correcting the situation. I've resorted to filing a complaint with the BBB and Paypal.

I've built a part and offer it to partner labs at no profit for at least 2 years. Shapeways increased the price by more than 25% in October and will not call or email me to help me understand how to either change the part or make it easier for them to print to reduce the price. I've inquired at least 3 times using their online contact tool, and I only received one canned response that described their price increase.

People built businesses, maybe foolishly, using their 3D print service, and without notice or explanation, they've increased the price so much that the business isn't possible. In my case, I will be moving as quickly as possible to a much cheaper subtractive manufacturing model as soon as possible.

I'm a product designer, and wanted to share replacement parts to repair older products to extend their life.

The idea behind Shapeways is excellent - designers design unique things in CAD, or share proprietary parts by putting the 3D data files used to make the parts into a virtual shop. From here, customers can find a product's replacement part (or unique design etc.), choose material and quantity and pay Shapeways to make the part..

BUT..
1. The process for setting up a shop is tedious, and TOTALLY non intuitive.
2. The prices are way too high - other 3D printers are quote much less for same or better materials.
3. The spreadsheet to set up an account and take a small royalty is so complex - I gave up trying. Shapeways force you to download a totally unclear spread sheet with unfathomable columns. Then details are supposed to be added and the spreadsheet re-uploaded ! All this SO UN-user friendly, its beyond a joke.

Its as if Shapeways are just an expensive 3D printing outfit, who have tried to increase their customer base beyond professionals, but without really doing much to build a proper public facing interface (even professional 3D printers, such as protolabs, are better, easier to use and lower costs).

Unless Shapeways can improve all this
I cannot recommend it to end users, designers, hobbyist or customers.

Terrible service, they lie and cheat. You are meant to be able to cancel order and have manual reviews of the files once ordered but they refuse to cancel your order and do not notify you that their reviewing your files by the printing engineers which they are meant too. They said I could order just to have my files checked then cancel but actually did not, they charged me and never refunded. The products were also broken upon delivery and were terribly made. I could not even paint them due to the poor quality.

Interesting and potentially valuable service, but long waits and slow shipping paired with lackluster customer support.