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SoliForum - 3D Printing Community → Solidoodle Discussion → charging for printing
I'm developing enclosures for some JeeNodes (miniaturized Arduinos plus radio transceivers) for a friend who wants a prototype to show to a product developer. I'm struggling with how to price my services in a manner that is reasonable. I designed the parts (SketchUp), printed some pre-production parts, and am now printing 4 sets of enclosures. Each enclosure prints for about 15 hours.
Are any of you selling your services? How do you price them?
I'm developing enclosures for some JeeNodes (miniaturized Arduinos plus radio transceivers) for a friend who wants a prototype to show to a product developer. I'm struggling with how to price my services in a manner that is reasonable. I designed the parts (SketchUp), printed some pre-production parts, and am now printing 4 sets of enclosures. Each enclosure prints for about 15 hours.
Are any of you selling your services? How do you price them?
If he is a friend (assuming he is on a limited budget for his prototypes) then I would not charge him more than maybe the cost of materials. When I used to do prints for money I would usually feel out the customer and try to get a sense of what their budget was and adjust my cost as necessary. Remember that the printer is doing most of the work during those 15 hour prints so look at the time it actually took you to design the part.
Depending on your skill level I would charge between $15-30 an hour for the design work and then charge for materials on top of that.
Or you can do it like the company I used to work for and bill the customer at $125 an hour regardless.
Thanks!
I was thinking more of a charge for design work ($25 to $50/hour?) plus a charge for the print, where the print charge would be based either on time or on materials (cubic cms of plastic). Maybe $10/hour for the use of the printer? Hard to know what is reasonable. Of course, that would make each part cost $150, which seems absurd. $2/hour to use the printer?
When I slice with Slic3r, it tells me the amount of plastic used, but when I reload a gcode file, there is no indication of how much plastic was used. Anyway. Just trying to get some different opinions.
also, if you were not doing any part design but just running the prints then I would try to come up with a machine hourly rate to charge for parts.
Thanks!
I was thinking more of a charge for design work ($25 to $50/hour?) plus a charge for the print, .
your friend needs to find better friends...
50 an hour is ridiculous. For starters your using Sketchup which to me says your fairly new in the game which means your skill level is low. Low skill level=more time to do the same job which puts you closer to my original $15 per hour.
Just to give you an idea I can get engineering work done for me right now for $20/hr.
Thanks for your input! At this point my friend has been charged zero...
I made a little holder hat it seems a bunch of buddys want, I would prefer not to spend my day making them .. I can't remember the pricing I placed in skeinforge or where it resides even at the moment, but its 4g of filament and takes 22 minutes to print.pronterfac came up with 46c .. i am going to go with $4 .. it might get me a roll of filament I guess.
ok, its skeinforge,analyse,statistics .. you can save its calculations in a text file, going to go with $10/hour up from the default of $1 per hour, that seems fairly reasonable to me.
if your friend intends to profit from your design, i see it as a job, still .. mates rates should apply.
If he is going to sell it, tell him the prototype is his for a percentage of the profits....
If he's a friend, charge what makes it worth it to you to design it. Each person is different and if he doesn't like your price he can take it elsewhere, he's not going to make you rich printing a couple things. Then upload it to shapeways for their price and cut it in half because yours isn't going to be as nice.
If you want to give away your time and effort, it's up to you. I'm a professional mech eng designing parts in solidworks and autocad for the last 20 years, I wouldn't get my arse off the couch for $20 an hour at home, not with two kids under 3 that I'd be taking the time away from. If they don't want to pay, I'm fine with not doing it.
I've been selling parts to the company I work for that has more than paid for the sd2 already. I'm undercutting the competition that we had been using (with professional 3d printers) by typically 20% or more, but you'd crap yourself if you knew what I can charge per hour.
I would be happy to crap myself! What DO you charge?!?
I'm not looking to charge my friend top dollar. I'm trying to find a middle ground between a commercial rate and a freebie. Your suggestion about charging half of what ShapeWays would charge seems like the right kind of approach. Thanks!
For a friend, I'd charge a 6 pack now.
If he gets the contract, he owes you a case.
It's a friend. Are you really going to charge him $50 an hour for something you enjoy doing?
If it's an 'associate,' I would charge him nominal fee. Total parts printed (By weight.) and a bit of time for the machine. Electric isn't free, after all.
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I think I'll charge him something like $10 apiece for now, with some pre-agreed number for when/if the money rolls in.
Thanks for all of your input! I doubt that I'll be the only one faced with this conundrum
Get the money while you can, I read a story today that Staples will be putting 3d printers in their stores. You upload the model and go pick up your print, or they can mail it to you. They'll be using the Mcor IRIS 3D printer which can print in color.
That's great! I had been hoping one of the services would pick up Mcor since it should be cheaper for large objects, but this is even better. They only cost the store something like $300 a month and the material cost for Staples is pretty much $0. Unlimited blades and glue come with that payment. The cost for customers should be very low since it takes very little labor, especially if they leave it to the customer to peel away the paper.
I can see using this for for bigger prints, and especially the color. Layer resolution is .1mm (thickness of paper) and you don't have to worry about overhangs. You just need to make sure that there won't be any interior volumes where you can't get the leftover paper out. It would be great to pick up the same or next day rather than wait on Shapeways. At the beginning I don't imagine there would be much wait since the market for that service is still small.
I wish it wasn't Europe first, but Mcor is Irish and they are more established there. I'm happy for them, it's a great printer. The paper and glue method is much more compatible with the mainstream and would be a good home printer if it wasn't so big. Can you imagine how much easier it would be to operate one of these? No complicated toolpaths, only full slices like a DLP printer. But no issues with focus, cure times, expensive toxic materials. It just cuts an outline, sprays some glue, lays the next page on and cuts the next outline. No judgement calls on how to tweak the settings for a particular type of object, just one speed for the blade, a set amount of glue for the part, and a light pattern of glue dots for the outside. Bad prints go into the paper recycle bin.
let's kill more forest.. i dont think that using one ream of paper (around 500 sheets) for one tiny object even if the object size is not the full paper size is a good idea... when we try to explain to not print each email you receive in any business
It's still more renewable and biodegradable than plastic. The amount of plastic I have printed and thrown away per finished part due calibration, warping, failed prints, experimenting with settings, and basic iteration probably exceeds what the waste paper would be. And a service like Staples would try to be smart about packing as many jobs into an run as they can. You could even stack them up vertically.
I can't see them giving away the paper for free though. The cost for a ream of paper is $5 which is about 3" tall? If you're in the business to make a profit, all you have to do is be cheaper than the alternative and you will be okay. You can even get away with charging more since you're offering same day pickup.
In my opinion people are going about pricing the wrong way for home 3d printing. If printer ink people thought the way we're thinking we would pay $1 per ink cartridge instead of $40. You charge what the market will pay. I look at the cost of a shapeways or the prices I personally am paying for people using 3dsystems printers for my prototypes. If I base my prices off a percentage of that cost because my quality is a percentage of theirs I don't feel like I'm robbing anyone. It doesn't cost me anything to do it. I paid for the machine already, the electricity to run it is next to nothing, the cost of the filament per print is less than $1, and I've already got the software and computer needed to design anything I can dream up and run the printer. I have tremendously real costs to print each item, but that doesn't mean I have to sell them for $2 each.
I have the added benefit of a handful of years of buying 3d printed parts from a professional service house, so I know what I can get away with in my niche market. If I was doing something for a brother or a friend I would do it for free. An aquaintance I'd probably go design + (shapeways/2)
For someone like Staples offering a service to the general public, I'm not sure you would be able price in comparison to Shapeways or Redeye. They will be advertising this to people who have never heard of 3D printing, and don't already have that context for comparison. If they charge Stoney $250 to print his Transformers trailer, it might be half the Shapeways cost of $500, but it won't matter, it's still $250 which puts that service into B2B territory.
Fortunately the labor and material costs for the Mcor is low enough they should be able to do consumer pricing. And it's a good fit for Staples because there is no way they are paying $5 for a ream of paper. They buy it wholesale in massive quantities. It will be factored in to the overall cost, but doesn't need to have the retail markup of a box of paper applied to it.
Good point, I haven't found a timelapse of this style of printing, do you have any videos of the Mcor?
Here is a video of the Iris from their channel. They don't have very many examples of color models, what they have shown are really cool-
Here is a video of the Iris from their channel. They don't have very many examples of color models, what they have shown are really cool-
Is this the printer that does layers of paper?
That's it alright 
Wish I had lots more money...
IanJohnson wrote:Here is a video of the Iris from their channel. They don't have very many examples of color models, what they have shown are really cool-
Is this the printer that does layers of paper?
Seems so. I'm not sure this would be great for making parts.
It would be good for models, but functional parts... nope.
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