#Shapeways

[therobotmonster]

Do you have a 3d printer and a love of toys and action figures?

Shapeways is shutting down. I need to move my library of material to cults, but I need test prints and pics to do that effectively.

I need one (or probably several) people with 3d printers who would like to get free access to the files I'm planning to sell in exchange for test printing and photographing the results.

A variety of my sculpts are shown here to give an idea of what you'd be working with, as well as some of my results for when I had an old ABS printer.

I've been doing this literally for a decade or more, so there's a lot of options.

And it would help me keep this stuff in circulation so I can keep fed and fun can be had by all.

Thanks!

[rahisaurus]

Happy #810NICLEday !! As a gift to the community, I'm releasing all my 3D-printable mask files for free, including all the project materials. Find them here in my linktree: https://linktr.ee/rahisaurus

[natureintheory]

A collection of wearable 3D art inspired by science:

✦ NEW: Wave-Particle Duality Pendant ✦ The Wave-Particle Duality Rings ✦ A Candle in the Dark: Lantern Earrings

Available now on Shapeways!

✦ Shapeways.com/shops/nature-in-theory ✦ Linktr.ee/NatureInTheory

Original designs © Olena Shmahalo / Nature in Theory

[bobthedoctor27]

Malruuk

Renowned Nynrah Ghost and leader of a prominent crafting guild. Malruuk made a name for himself with early success inventing the firing mechanism that would be later used by other Fe-Matoran crafters in the Zamor Launcher. He was ruthless in his practice and often absorbed entire operations into his guild.

During the Reign of Shadows, he openly began creating weapons for the armies of Makuta, commissioning new Exo-Toa and Protosteel molds to equip the Rahkshi armies invading the rest of the universe. Ethically ambiguous and morally dubious, Malruuk had a historic ability to always back the winning side, be they Makuta, Dark Hunter, or Vortixx.

Malruuk uses a Matoran body design I’ve been tinkering with since 2011. His mask is a noble Kadin designed by Exota Forge.

[angryraptor13]

Welp. Shapeways filed for bankruptcy. Shame, I just got some more sets of articulated Bionicle hands to check the tolerances on their other colors. No Galva Kanohi for me, I guess ☹️

[voidaspects]

Actively kicking myself for not downloading all of the free 3D models off shapeways that I could get while I could. They were all just right there dangit! The 3D printing you can source elsewhere, but the models...

If only I had known in advance dangit!

...yes this is specifically about bionicle masks

I hope someone else has these downloaded somewhere. I was hoping a lot of the people who made the models would have moved their resources elsewhere but I haven't seen many of them give updates anywhere. Only some of them appear to be active on socials.

[titanomancy]

End of an era.

[gordontheengineswifenirmal]

So, now that shapeways went under, what will happen to the authors’ face files that were on it? Will they become publicly available? Has anyone started to figure this out? How easy is it to 3d print? Are there any straightforward tutorials for utter newbs?

[taraljc]

I am so bummed about the shapeways news. I can't count the number of miniatures that I have gotten from the marketplace for my 1:6 scale dioramas and kitbashed action figures. from Captain Cold and Heatwaves guns, to light switches and electrical outlets, to an incredibly solid and heavy 1/6 scale vintage cast iron radiator, it was an incredibly invaluable resource to any diorama artist.

[cha5otic]

Since Shapeways have shut, are we screwed

[jackalgirl]

For the two of you who might be momentarily obsessed (as I am) with the ancient (everywhere, as it turns out, I mean, it does stand to reason) game/divination method of knucklebones (and who are, of course, both to be found on Tumblr), check out Misha Tikh's video showing off 3D printed tali. You get get these on Shapeways (a bit spendy, but they turn out really nicely): https://www.shapeways.com/product/LE3XNVQQM/knucklebone-dice-set Or, if you have your own 3D printer, the file that Misha has made available on Thingiverse prints up beautifully: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1036458 (I've printed these out at 80% scale and am currently priming them for some painting & weathering). From a completely different group of folks, there is a full deluxe set of "Tali", as was put together on Kickstarter something like five years ago, on sale for $25 from the original $40 over at VR-Soft Games: https://vrgames-vr-soft-com.myshopify.com/products/tali-deluxe-w-4-player-add-on-characters -- this comes with a whole roleplaying game version of the game, with coin-tokens, and may be very well suited for anyone who's interested in ancient history and who possesses a crow brain (your mileage may vary).

[therobotmonster]

So... Shapeways is going bankrupt.

This is particularly irksome for me, as that's a good 1/3rd of my monthly income, so I'm crossing my fingers while I start setting up a new store on cults. I have literally thousands of items so getting them all up is going to take ages.

But why did this happen?

Well I'll fucking tell you what I think happened.

It was a company run on arrogance and cowardice.

Shapeways made its mark as the cafepress of 3d printing. The weight of this was their marketplace that let people sell prints directly to customers without having to do the printing themselves. At its peak, I made more from Shapeways than from my day job.

The problem was that Shapeways put zero effort into the marketplace. They'd send some of us to a con to promote the idea of 3d printing game minis a couple of times, sure, but when it came to actual site maintenance and design every suggestion and request by sellers was roundly ignored. We asked for better search and categorization options. We asked to be able to name variants in our stores. We asked for better communication from the print techs. We asked for accurate subcategories that actually reflected how customers looked for items. None of it was done.

As such, the site was baffling to customers and difficult to understand. This was made worse by Shapeways' continual renaming of their materials. So after a couple of years Shapeways announces that they're not going to do anything for the marketplace because it's underperforming, and are going to focus on B2B, and in doing so they buried the marketplace in a tiny little link on the front page.

Overnight sales plummeted. We complained again, nothing was done. We asked for a different URL that went straight to the marketplace (something that would literally cost them $80 to do) that we could direct customers to, we were ignored.

The marketplace is underperforming, so we won't put in the effort needed to make the marketplace perform. Makes perfect sense.

Prices go up. Shipping goes up substantially, and then it was a thousand little cuts. The auto-checks were altered to make it impossible to verify anything manually with any accuracy, so it became harder to design for the limitations of their printers.

The site slowed down substantially so every click had a several second pause, making shopping and maintaining frustrating and unpleasant. Shipping costs to many areas of the world became insanely high, effectively cutting off entire markets.

Want to not be Shapeways? Then remember this:

Your users know more about your site experience and their own needs than you do.

If you have a sales site, and the people selling through it say "this isn't working, we need this" then maybe you should listen to them and not just say 'you're wrong' to their faces.

Oh, and also, if goddamn Rolls-Royce comes in filing false DMCA claims over the use of the word "Phantom" in any context on your site, you don't take every item through a multiple day review for every edit and say "LOL, we can't do anything"

You take them to court for abusing the system on behalf of your user base, you fucking bootlicking cowards.

OH, AND I ALMOST FORGOT!

I HAD TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS FROM A DM ON TWITTER.

They've sent me a check every month for half a decade and they don't even send a "We're closing shop" email.

Look upon my prints, ye mighty, and despair.

If you want to help me though the meantime, here's my paypal.me and my gofundme.

[melminiatures]

A rotating view of Ahsoka's T-6 Shuttle. A modified version of the shuttle we saw in Tales of the Jedi that she will probably use in the Ahsoka show.

[natureintheory]

BLACK FRIDAY & SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY SALE!

Ready-to-print items only — not for custom orders

No code. Automatic 15% off original prices store-wide until December 1, 2023

UPDATE: On top of my own sale, Shapeways is doing Cyber Monday:

15% OFF ORDERS $50-$199: 15CYBER2023

20% OFF ORDERS $200+: 20CYBER2023

—

A collection of wearable 3D art inspired by science:

✦ Wave-Particle Duality Pendant

✦ The Wave-Particle Duality Rings

✦ A Candle in the Dark: Lantern Earrings

✦ Infinity Knot Ring

Available now on Shapeways! ↓

✦ Shapeways.com/shops/nature-in-theory

✦ Linktr.ee/NatureInTheory

Original designs © Olena Shmahalo / Nature in Theory

[bobthedoctor27]

BRAIN ATTACK Nex

I’ve waited nine years for this moment…

For reasons unknown to us, Nex and Stringer would never see another release after 2012, despite two full waves of sets they could easily have been integrated into. With Bulk growing increasingly orange and Stringer’s lack of unified color scheme, my belief is that Nex and Stringer underperformed in BREAKOUT as the two cheaper sets of the second wave and were cut from the lineup for the remainder of Hero Factory’s run.

Until today…

With a helmet commissioned from @galva_nize_ I present BRAIN ATTACK Nex. He is of the same height class as Stormer and Surge and is equipped with an Energy Sword for melee combat and a shoulder mounted missile launcher (inspired by @ems_mocs) to fend off the evil Brains invading Makuhero City and the galaxy beyond.

I have taken great lengths to keep the design language of the other BRAIN ATTACK sets: - Melee weapons - Silver or Gunmetal secondary color - Transparent armor piece - Hero Core Clamp and Visor

This build also emulates the arm seen on his 2.0 form, only this time in silver! The shoulder addon is a bootleg part.

Building this MOC is honestly a dream come true for me. I’m glad I can finally give Nex the form he deserves.

[angryraptor13]

Shapeways Bionicle Hands

The knuckle holes worked!! 😃

The fingers *will* come out if you try to remove them, but they don't yeet themselves across the room anymore if you look at them wrong.

Thankfully, the thumb socket worked fine as-is. I have no idea where I could've drilled slack holes for it 😅

The wrist sockets were also fine (first thing I tested), probably because they already *have* slack holes.

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