calculating how much to charge for 3d prints

Yes this has been discussed before several times both by hobbyists  like yourself wanting to make a few prints for friends.And by guys looking so set up a print parlor.

I was having this discussion with a workplace neighbor. The guy that has the business next to my workplace. He asked me about making money with 3d printing.  Bottom line and making a long story short IMHO one should charge something like $10 an hour for machine time and double material cost..
Then I showed him a nice little rose bud I had printed for my wife and said it took about an hour to print. Then asked him what he would be willing to pay for it. After a couple minutes he said well honestly it looks like it could have come from the dollar store.

The lesson here is there is often a huge gap in reality between the customer and the 3d printer owner operator.  Do not give away valuable time or material. But know what is very reasonable to you may seem ridiculous to the uninformed customer.

There are reasons for this. We as american consumers are spoiled by the tons of cheap imported goods virtually available at our fingertips. Plastic items are viewed as cheap and disposable. Most people have no or little clue what is involved in making things.

So back to the original question what do you charge  ? Come up with a price that is fair to you.Give potential customer the price /estimate.  when there jaw comes back up from the floor . kindly explain to them why your price is what it is. Then if you really want to print the items try to come up with a price you can both of you can  live with  or better yet or be comfortable with.

This has been a topic of discussion for years in the arts and crafts world . people what one of a kind handcrafted items and expect to pay mass produced import prices.
Tin

Morgan is that cubic mm or cm ??
Tin

I've done a few jobs and developed a formula in excel for pricing and to generate an invoice. Excel makes life so much easier . I still need to tweak and graph it vs @cost to adjust it better to take in consideration the different material costs eventually though.

- First, I have an initial charge for any print since small items wouldn't really be worth the effort otherwise.
- Second, I charge so the less material I use the more expensive the cost and gradually get closer to filament cost as the cc goes up. Without looking at the spreadsheet, I think it's around 500% at the high end. I charge by the cc my slicer reports not the cc of the model so customers who want something thicker or solid will have to pay more for it and that's an option unlike SLS.
- Third, my charge depends on the material used since they range in price a decent amount.
- Lastly, I charge for the time estimate it takes to print since they are somewhat close and in reality the actual cost for the time isn't too bad and it's more for my machines wear and tear and me checking up on it to make sure it didn't mess up.

Some other factors to think about are:
- Charging enough so failed prints are covered as well. I don't expect the customer to pay for my machines problems.
- Makes a good precursor as some others mentioned so the customer can get a physical part before possibly having it make in higher quality ranging from shapeways to custom manufacturing.

For my jobs so far, I've made functional parts which is where I actually make money. Right now my fees aren't as high as they could be and I charge by the job not the hour + prototype prints if they want.

Also, if you are hired to do a job for someone, they own the rights to that part/product.