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Dec 2017

I have noticed that almost all of my customers ignore or do not understand what the warnings are in the part diagnostic section.

In most cases the customer will upload a part showing a variety of errors like: “Part contains thin walls” or “260 Intersecting faces” and the customer will simply ask in chat “can you print this as is?”.

Has anyone else run into similar issues?
How have you handled the customer to help them?

This scenario has a high attrition rate when I try to help the customer. I am looking for advice on how to retain the client and motivate them to fix their files.

  • created

    Dec '17
  • last reply

    Dec '17
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Ive found that some files need to be ran through netfabb and repaired. This use to be done for us but 3dhubs turned that off.

It also helps to take screen shots from the slicer to show them the spots with issues and ask if that would be an issue. Sometimes they say that its ok or that needs to be fixed. Then you can work with them on finding out what program they designed it in to see if its an exporting issue or let them know what the minimum thickness you need to print well is.

Hi Keebie81,

You make some good points. Especialy about asking customer if they want the model printed anyway with the issues. I do talk to customers to try and work out the issues but I find most customers will abandon the project because the issues are above their skill level leaving both of us frustrated and without a solution. I think 3D hubs should bring back netfabb or some other repair tool. It was very helpful because a lot customers are new to CAD and some packages like Rhino are sometimes a challenge to create a good printable file.

Hi Kirby,

Thank you for the link. This will be very useful since most of my customers are rhino users

Welcome to the club :smiley:
Most of the time we fix it without even getting into conversation about it.
3Dhubs should relay order with errors to the hubs with 3D designing service.
I would say only 10% of the customers with bad models can fix the model themselves, so it’s really hard to keep them motivated.

Yeah, I have done the same as well, I will run a model through netfabb to fix it. We even offer file diagnostics and repair as a service. The struggle is upselling students with tight budgets and challenging models to repair. Seems like a lot of additional overhead for a $20 print job.

Nearly all of my arriving orders have print issues. The worst orders are parts people order in clear, and they are these small hollow objects (containers and similar) that are loaded with errors, require support material in the inside and out, and just look like a disaster no matter how good you are with model repair and good support material placement.

The second half of this issue is the penalty you get (supposedly always a hit on metrics, just not as severe depending on category) for declining these jobs, even when you know they will turn out ugly. I guess the good news is, I don’t get all that many orders anymore, so this issue happens less frequently during the week. :slight_smile: