To keep it even somewhat fair, Hubs would have to physically measure the part themselves. A customer could easily take the pictures at a skewed angle to warp how the print looks or improperly calibrate calipers so that the device measures incorrectly. If a Hub hadn’t measured the part themselves, they have no defense in the dispute and I don’t think this thinking is being paranoid either. It’d be a quick way for a customer to get prints completed for free, and for larger jobs, I can see this happening quite a bit. It’s very easy to edit photos, and I will not accept that as the only way 3D Hubs decides if a print order was completed correctly or not.
If Hubs wants to implement dimensional accuracy requirements, then that’s fine but you have to be able to implement it/police it fairly and provide your Hubs with the tools they need as well. I feel like a broken record here, but getting dimensions from an STL file is inaccurate and inefficient; if I need to verify dimensions are correct (which now I do), then I need to know what they are in the first place. I can only do that if the customer tells me what they are in a drawing, or if I have the parametric model. I can ask a customer for the file, but if they don’t have it and can’t clearly communicate what dimensions are required, these new guidelines will force me to turn them away. The risk is too high otherwise.
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.
I understand your concerns as a final user, however wouldn’t be more easy for you and the hubs that print your cabinets to have a list with the specifications that you want your cabinets to be printed (i.e. I want them with so much infill and so much thick walls)?
That way both you and the hub will know what you want? To blame each hub that they haven’t print your part the way that you want when you didn’t gave them any specifications is a little unfair. And no 3DHUBS they should not make standard the specifications that you want your part to be printed because it is not standard for millions of other parts. So my suggestion is to submit your specifications when you place the order.
Hi all, newbie here, been lurking as I’ve got a cheap CTC machine I’ve had for a week and been playing with/upgrading, anyway, couldn’t resist weighing in on this one - I used to run a CNC mill for prototyping parts, and there’s no way in hell I’d agree to a 1% tolerance on most small plastic parts, especially ones made hot on the machine, even though I could hold far closer tolerances than that on the machine, why?
Well not only do you have shrinkage to deal with, but if the part relaxes over a few days whilst in shipping, absorbs some moisture whilst it’s sat in their workshop for a week, or you live in a place much colder/hotter than the customer, the plastic parts could have moved out of tolerance just through natural growth/reshaping. You could have a 1% change in dimensions just through normal room temperature water absorption rates alone on such as Nylon going from dry printed back to it’s more normal 2-6%
If you’re going to specify a 1% tolerance you really need to spec out whether that is relative or absolute, and at what temperature and humidity, and explain to the customers that their parts are going need to sit in a room with a controlled temperature and moisture level for a couple of days to stabilise so you can measure them accurately. Otherwise you’re going to have some real issues guaranteeing those tolerances on FF production parts which have all manner of internal stresses just from the way they’re formed, not to mention varying crystallinity not just from surface to interior but also on the filament skin to core. That’s not even taking into account any creep that might occur on the part later on depending on how and where it’s stored.
Agreed. This brings up great points I hadn’t even thought about. It’s a shame it seems like it will just be ignored by the developers, I hope I’m not the only one who was even more upset to see that email rolled out completely ignoring our questions and concerns. Still a real lack of response on 3D hubs part.
