Hello again Robin, So to me this means hubs will have to start watching our backs by taking photos our selves of parts with calipers next to them, it wouldn’t be hard to fake photos to make it seem like parts aren’t the right sizes when they really are. This would be the only way to insure people aren’t cheating us out of good parts, but even then now we have to charge for our time photographing and setting all that up
My costs are definitely going to go up because of this; even if the verification is for my own insurance, it’s now another step I have to do for every print and that will be reflected in my prices. Because you’re right, there’s no way to prove it is correct unless I have already verified it myself and have pictures of it.
The problem is, how do I know if a dimension is right or not? Unless I have a parametric model file, or the customer explicitly specifies the dimension of a feature, I have no way of knowing (other than guessing from the STL) if it is correct.
Maybe instead of enforcing these rules the way they are, they should have provided tools to educate hubs on better ways to quote and accept an order, such as good questions to ask and topics to touch on when explaining. If people not getting the tolerances was an issue, this was not the way to go about it. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem 3D hubs really cares for our opinions on that, the distinct lack of response from any of their employees is only even more evident of that.
Unfortunately with the amount of Grant money 3D hubs has received recently, our opinions really don’t mean anything. I’ve seen this time and time again where as soon as big figured come into play management goes to shit. Very disappointing. This whole thing is really pushing to go off 3D hubs for business, which was not something I wanted to do. A year ago, all I did was promote 3D hubs as I liked what it was about, and how their aim was to educate people on additive manufacturing. I can’t help but think they’ve lost their ways since then.
To further this point, 95% of hubs and 99% of customers do not have sufficient metrology to measure the things that are being printed. Bounding box dimensions are a great tool to get the relative size of a part in a digital space but are useless in the real world. Most prints are not rectilinear and are impossible to measure short of scanning them back into the digital space and comparing them to their source file. Taking a photograph of a print next to a ruler or with a caliper are both useless verification methods unless focal length of camera and a bunch of other easily manipulated factors are taken into account. To validate a dimension the measuring technique has to be objective.
How about instead of holding hubs to a ridiculous standard of quality which are unenforceable and will undoubtedly increase the cost of every FDM print and reduce overall ease of use for this whole system we add a step to the verification process where the hubs have to verify the dimensional consistency of their machine. Hubs could print several calibration cubes and either send them direct to 3D Hubs headquarters or measure them, similar to the initial marvin. This could even be a periodic check. This would be like a drivers license, you need to prove you can do it once or twice and then you’re left alone. Asking for every single print to be measured increases the cost and significantly reduces the appeal of 3d hubs in general for both the customers and the hubs. I truly understand the spirit of what it is you guys are trying to do but implementing blanket rules that cant be enforced without tons of effort not the way to do it.
I think its mainly because they dont have enough feedback internally on the practicality and implementation of things they propose. This very much feels like a marketing driven company with very little engineering or maker feedback, which quickly turns into a circle jerk of corporate values and quarterly earnings oriented business moves. The customers needs will slowly get belittled until they are forgotten, all the customers will feel alienated. A new startup will pop up and cater aggressively to the core user needs and 3D hubs will fail as a business. Unless they start listening and discussing the issues at hand with us.
