How much do you charge for your 3D prints?

[hrvoje 0]

Hi,

I have been searching around and could not find any answer to this question. I only can find prices at large 3D print services, but non of them prints PLA or ABS on a DIY printer.

Since in this forum we are all using the same printer, I guess a kind of "average" charge for the printouts has built up. Or maybe not?

What is your calculation base - weighing after printing, software filament estimation, bounding box of the printed object?

Do you charge only the material costs or add some other costs (time, machine payoff, whatever)?

Maybe this questions are kind of strange, but I just do not have an idea where to start from in a country where we (for the time being) have a handful of DIY 3D printers.

Any hints or ideas are welcome.

[spooner777 0]

If you use Cura you can enter your material costs and it tells you how much the actual part will cost. For me that is always between 10cents and 1€. So really really cheap.

So if you want to charge somebody it is really just for your machine cost and of course the hours of work you put in. At the moment it takes me about 5 failed starts of a print. So after the first 3 layers it usually works fine. That adds up to a lot of time fixing the machine and so on. I would say 20 times the material costs? For friends maybe 10 times.

[hrvoje 0]

Hi spooner777,

I also use Cura so the material cost estimation is not the problem. And as you say, only material costs are veeeeery low, so I think the material estimation after slicing is precise enough. Even if later the filling has to be denser or similar, the material costs do not impact the overall price in a large amount.

On the other hand, if we charge something to somebody then we cannot charge him/her our problems (extruder jamming, failed starts, loosing time because of low print speeds at badly tuned printers etc.). So I guess it is only the material cost and the printer payoff. To payoff the printer we should know how many kilograms of PLA or ABS will our UM survive - 10, 100, 1000? Can anybody guess? Are there some durability tests made by the Ultimaker team to answer this question?

I see from your answer that you have the same problem with estimating the value of our printouts. I guess for the time being the fee it is "guessing" and waiting for the market to balance this issue out.

But anyway, you have made a first attempt. I have thought about five times the material costs, otherwise we get close to the shapeways and co. prices and I am not sure that we can compete with their printouts and materials.

Let's see if anybody else has any other ideas?

[IRobertI 520]

I may be wrong but I think the wast majority of owners are just printing for themselves with the occasional print for a friend.

[hrvoje 0]

Yup, that's true I Robert I. But there are also people out there where one day the friend probably came and asked: "I need some printed parts for my -whatever assembly- that I am going to sell. Can you print them for me and what would they cost?"

I am not sure that all of the majority is only printing a few hero figures for the kids at home and a vase for the best friend's birthday - the 3D print is very addictive for people also outside the friends and family circle.

There is even a "Print for me" section in this forum. So, there is a market out there.

[Daid 306]

Protospace (fablab) charges 10c per gram of final printed material. This is just to pay for the material I think, as you operate the machine yourself in a fablab.

[hrvoje 0]

Thanks Daid,

This is also a good starting point.