Shapeways changes April 15th.

Here is the e-mail I got this evening.

Dear Shapeways Designer,

Here at Shapeways, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our material offerings to be more enabling, better and faster for you. As a Frosted Detail Plasticdesigner, we are writing to let you know about upcoming changes in our materials that will affect products you have made and/or are selling in your Shapeways shop.

What's happening? On April 15th we are:

Introducing Frosted Extreme Detail (FXD), with a higher resolution than Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD)Retiring Frosted Detail (FD); FUD will remain unchangedRenaming the Detail Plastics materials Acrylic Plastics

What does this mean for you?

If you would like to order your designs in FD, please do so by April 14th to ensure your FD order goes through, as the transition will happen on April 15th. As noted on our Material Status page, we have added 4 days to our expected production time for FD in anticipation of high demand.

Designs that you’ve printed in FD will not go away, and can be ordered in either FUD or FXD. We are updating success rate metrics so successful FD prints from the past will count towards FUD and FXD.

If you have a Shapeways Shop, customers will no longer be able to order your designs in FD after the transition. Products previously available only in FD will no longer be for sale unless you enable another material like FUD or FXD (when it becomes available.) If you have multiple products, the Pricing CSV Wizzard makes it easy to update materials and pricing in bulk.

Where you currently see Detail Plastic material names, you and your customers will see the Acrylic Plastic names. White Detail becomes White Acrylic, Black Detail becomes Black Acrylic and Transparent Detail becomes Transparent Acrylic.

Why are we doing this?

Frosted Extreme Detail has a higher resolution than Frosted Ultra Detail, decreasing the layer height from 29 to 16 microns (the shorter the layer, the higher the resolution). While more expensive to produce, thinner layers means unprecedented detail and surface finish, sharper edges, less stepping, and stronger models. It’s perfect for the most demanding miniatures, figurines, and molds and masters for casting.

Frosted Detail is a fragile material that often breaks during 3D printing, requiring reprints that make the process costly and slow. Because it is printed enclosed in support material that is difficult to completely clean, it's also hard to give you the quality you deserve. Unfortunately, after trying hard to improve the process, we've decided to stop production and focus on better alternatives for you.

Finally, we are renaming Detail Plastic to help reinforce that it is stronger but less detailed than our Frosted Detail Plastic.

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In short Frosted Detail is going away and Ultra Frosted is taking its place at a higher price point. If you want something in Frosted Detail do it now, you are running out of time.