I bought from Shapeways once. Very high price for the item, and when received, quality so low as to be useless for model building. Shapeways will not be missed.
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Back to the X-Actos, metal files, and a honkin’ large supply of Evergreen and brass shim stock.
Not that I ever abandoned them.
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I’ve used ShapeWays in the past and I must say, for my meager modeling needs, I was never really disappointed — except for that horrific Search Engine! 
—mike 
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Between Shapeways lacking website, terrible search, not having a good handle on what I’d receive and the number of modelers voicing unhappiness with what they received, I never ordered from Shapeways. In hindsight that seems like a pretty good decision.
I feel for the folks that lost their jobs.
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I received 2 emails last month from them about some big sale. Thank God I didn’t order anything. Or I would be banging my head against the wall right now. I been dealing with them since 2016. They made some nice 1/72 PT Boat crew and radars. Plus, I got a few conversions for the Space 1999 Eagles from them. Hope all of you are Having a great 4Th and for the rest of the world a great day. Cheers, Tony
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Same.
My problem was in-house where I would misplace the orders and have to order more. Might have been genius plan in hindsight now. Just wished I ordered more of Tom’s prints.
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Thank goodness I saw this. I was thinking of ordering some Panther II engine deck grille upgrades.
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I’m glad you posted this. I haven’t been on Shapeways for many months. Without this notification I would have been very surprised to find it gone.
It’s the end of an era for me. Ten years ago I commissioned a 3D artist to do some work. It was in my mind to do what many guys on here are now doing quite successfully. Shapeways was my only vehicle and it failed for the reasons already enumerated; too expensive, marginal print quality and difficult to order. What drove me nuts was how difficult it was to get Shapeways to print fine detail items and to get them “successfully” printed and listed for sale. I have several .stl files on Shapeways that are now gone forever - money lost and not to be recovered. Good riddance. Maybe I’ll have to seriously look into getting my own printer.
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I just received an email from Shapeways telling me “due to inactivity your Shapeways account will be deleted in 15 days”! Oh, no, I’m devasted! 
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For a long time my opinion has been that I won’t get my own 3D printer, because I’m convinced that there are lots of printers with free time on them and those are probably pretty advanced and expensive devices, so I would like to use them. Instead of focusing on perfecting the settings and playing around with all the necessary chemicals, I would like to focus on drawing good designs and doing the necessary research.
Now that was the problem with many designs in the Shapeways marketplace - many looked like they were drawn in 5 minutes time and offered for printing in the cheapest material. That’s why many of those designs didn’t have photos, just renders, because they were never printed out to verify the design. It was up to the buyer to check out exactly what they were buying - and if you activated the 3D preview, you could even see how the layers would go on the design. But I got a feeling not many people did that…
This is the type of thing that convinced me they weren’t ready for prime time yet:
When you could get this in resin and photo etch:
And if one of the items looks like azz, why would I want them in bunches of eight and ten, as so many like items were sold?
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Shapeways seems to cater to the 3D hobbyists who have novice to experienced 3D sculpting skills compared to other 3D sellers who prefer very experienced to expert 3D sculpting skills.
Essentially, most of Shapeway’s products resemble toys or trinkets, not (accurate) scale models. Often, Shapeway’s products’ details are mediocre, general shapes, blocky, lacking details and features, and out of scale. It all depends on how talented the 3D artist is, now was.
Shapeways did start the 3D printing revolution you see now, so Shapeways does deserve a place in the 3D printing history books. But, heck, even colleges and college Art students/college bookstores can potentially 3D print and sell their creations online in the future to the public now that 3D printers are becoming more mainstream and accessible.
That might also be a thing that not everybody got - a print on Shapeways had a minimum price that gave you a certain volume, or amount of resin. Until you exceeded that amount adding to your model didn’t increase the cost. In other words, printing one crappy welding kit would cost exactly the same as printing eight crappy welding kits, so the sellers tried to use as much of the already paid volume as possible to make the product more cost effective. Sometimes it made more sense, sometimes less, but since the extra copies were for free then why not?
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Oh crap!!! What a lousy way to start my weekend.
I ordered probably two dozen items from them and have been happy. I agree that the printing striations even on ultra fine never pleased me, and that waxy Goo even after doing everything that they said to do, would never come off of some items. But by and large, I found things on Shapeway that I want and things that I was planning to buy.
Damien, I had plans to buy your M47 turret and driver interiors.
Bummer.
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I guess Shapeways served a purpose in expanding the introduction of 3D product possibilities to the hobby. The evolution from the initial excellence of Live Resin 1/35 scale items and the larger variety of one off products from Shapeways 3D items has now reached the affordable, highly detailed home 3D printing. Once the slicer programing and 3D hardware print techniques are mastered, our hobby rockets forward in detail and accuracy for some pretty rare subjects. While I am personally saddened to see the immediate loss of some fun subjects like Mike’s Gibson guitar offering from Shapeways
I am excited to witness what the future holds.
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so large a 3D stash. Love my very patient wife 
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Can I say “s - - t” ?
You are getting some days off to relax on the seaside and you get this news.
Even though I agree on the many minus of Shapeways that some of you listed in this discussion I must admit that Shapeways has been, till now, the enabler for a new phase in my journey as a modeller.
I uploaded the first items to be 3D printed back in second half of 2016 and since then I added more than 150 items, from small items like radios to conversion parts for GMVs and M-ATVs.
Most of these items were designed for my models and later used by other modellers, some of the items upon customers request.
One year ago I evaluated if it was the case to buy a resin 3D printer.
The result was a “no go” only due to logistic issues: unfortunately I don’t have a place where to setup the “mini factory” required to 3D print in resin; doing this inside my apartment is definitely not feasible and moreover not safe.
Now it’s time for me to start searching for a new printing service.
The M1238A1 (RG-33) that I’m almost completely scratch building is waiting for some parts to be 3D printed.
By the way I’ll post some pictures of the work in progress in the coming weeks.
Do you have suggestions?
I will also have to think about how to continue making available to the modellers community the items I designed.
It was supposed to be full time holiday, it’s not going to be.
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Now I’m excited to see the model. Could it be a kit someday? I build almost exclusively modern us armor and it’s had to find good MRAPS.
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Maybe you and I can work together to crank out some of your print orders. Let me know if you are interested.
Kind regards,
James
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iMaterialise seems to be good
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