I don’t like the idea of standard support removal, as I like to leave on as it helps protect the print while shipping.
Skip to main content
Hi Robin3D,
I think it would also be helpful if you could clearly mark on the photos what is wrong by placing an arrow or circle on it.
Not all that is on the photo will be not acceptable I guess.
Thanks! Keep up the good work!
Best regards,
Sandra
remember with out our printers 3d hubs would be nothing you have a voice there is no benefit that i can see for a hub with the new rules apart from more work for us.
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.
Hi Chris,
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.
Thank you for articulating this so clearly, much better than I could have!
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.
It is really bad form to request feedback on a guidelines, then release the guidelines while still in discussion. It certainly sends a signal that 3dhubs is not listening. Especially when there are really a shortage of replies from 3dhubs for the things being discussed. It implies you asked for feedback to make the hubs FEEL like they have some input, but don’t really have input. With so many of your customers discussing it, and 3dhubs just implementing it during that discussion, it surely seems like you are not listening to your customers. I would like to remind 3dhubs that their customers are the 3d printers, NOT the folks that order the prints. Those are OUR customers. Many that we bring to 3dhubs on our own. Many of OUR customers ask us to work around 3dhubs, but I always push them TO 3dhubs, because the interface, software, and my payment protections are all worth the fee. But make no mistake, I am the 3dhubs customer, not MY customer, who ultimately gets the print.
Serious mistake here in handling your customers, asking for input while implementing the guidelines during the input phase.
I asked what the purpose of the new guideline are, and what problem they are trying to solve. This is key to me liking or not liking the guidelines.
I think the wording is still bad.
Several folks have asked for specific responses from 3dhubs in this discussion, and have not received it.
Folks are interested in how they handle ABS and Nylon prints, that can easily change size by over 1% due to shrinkage or humidity.
Several people asked how the guidelines might be enforced, and how the measuring could be verified.
Some folks stated they felt that they were not being listened to, and this was reinforced by a lack of response by 3dhubs to them.
All in all, I am for the new policy, but this is truly bad form, and a serious mishandling of the situation here by 3dhubs and their customers, in my humble opinion. I am all about increasing the quality of the 3d printing that is going on out there. I have customers who have brought me prints from other hubs, and I am shocked at some of the quality of the prints. So I am all for some better rules. That is not what I am talking about in this post.
It is hard for me to understand how during an ongoing discussion, 3dhubs could just go ahead and implement.