The chapter of bankruptcy requested was for liquidation, not for restructuring, so Shapeways will not be operating at some point in the future, after questions of ownership and prior asset sales have been resolved, which means the largest distributor of third party printing services will no longer be available for the largest suppliers of Armada designs. Will those models be available from another printing service... I would say yes, but not for some time and not at the price or quality of consistency they were from Shapeways.
Yesterday saw a flurry of announcements of the partial return of Shapeways. Only partial as operations will apparently be rebuilding in Europe, but any potential US facility return is very unclear, and the available print material options have been cut back with the original fine detail and ultra, the best for miniatures, being replaced by alternate materials.
Also notable is that the Marketplace at Shapeways will not be coming back, to be replaced by a Shapeways Shops concept. I doubt that the new infrastructure will allow the searchability and cross referencing of model alternatives between different designers to the same extent that the original did, as the rebuilding is going to be driven mostly by any modelers that choose to return to Shapeways.
The ease of use on the consumer site is still there, it was less than a minute to create a new account and run a model through their quality checks, but the costs are prohibitive. I compared a miniature of mine from a December 2020 invoice to now, and for a piece roughly a cubic inch in volume I could get the material costs incredibly close, $8.73 in fine clear then to $8.74 in tan visijet today, but nothing else. A minimum parts charge of $25.00 is now standard, a new priority charge of $1.53 is required for any production before Christmas, and the shipping has almost tripled, $9.71 then to $24.96 now.
I think with the current situation, Shapeways cannot be a hub for miniatures going forward. I would expect their quality control to be the highest for any custom product made, but will that really make up for the cost differential between them and the average hobbyist putting up models on Etsy?
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