Boyd J.

I used to like Shapeways although they were always kind of expensive especially for small objects because of their "per item" set-up charge. No discount on this fee for printing more than one. I started grouping small objects together on a tree/sprue to bring the cost down to a reasonable level when producing multiple small parts.
Many parts went through and came out perfect... but then a new "error" started appearing indicating that my sprued parts could not be properly printed and that I had to separate them and print them individually.
This is a scam to collect higher fees hidden behind a technical pretense. Objects that had printed without problem before can no longer be printed as the program recognizes multiple items on a sprue and rejects them.
If Shapeway would just drop the per item set-up fee on multiple parts or make it a fixed percentage of the material cost this would not be an issue. But on small parts the main cost is the set up fees and the costs quickly become prohibitive. With this new anti-customer policy I will no longer be using Shapeways.