out sourced 3D printing customers

interesting. so how would the school use those hours? 5 student users per half day of tech school or?

students make models - run em through a preconfigured repetier host package to estimate build time then they email me a zip file with the models which i print and ship straight off the bed ( including support material to keep post costs down) in a job lot

IMHO  in our modern society of mass cheap instant consumption, people have little clue of how anything is made. People often expect custom one of a kind work for the price of a mass produced  version. The wall marts and dollar stores of the world avail us with amazing variety of products often for a dollar.
As a result craftsmanship  artwork and creativity are often devalued and cheapened in the eyes of the unformed.

I remember a story told years ago at a blacksmith conference. A couple had cut a photo from a catalog of a iron headboard for a bed and asked for a price to have one made. They were appalled when the Blacksmith told them his price. IIRC is was about ten times the price in the catalog. For some reason they though HE could make one cheaper. 

Many people have there views formed by the unformed media.  Statements like "This group is making 3-D printed prosthetic hands with the press of a button and only cost $ 50." While not a lie and  not totally untrue it is not really the whole truth either.
The item was made by a volunteer, took many hours to design, about 12-14 hours to print and another hour plus to assemble. So throw labor cost of any sort of craftsman into the equation and the cost is realty much higher.

IMHO the customer consumer needs to understand the value  of one or two of a kind custom products and the craftsman needs to know what questions to ask and when to suggest home depot or the hardware store etc as a source of cheap functional product.
Tin

yep, sometimes only another craftsman can appreciate a craftsman's work. but how do millionaires value million dollar paintings/art yet think other handcrafted art is basement dollar shop value? they pay a fortune for handcrafted custom items at theme parks or exhibits or auctions many of which where mass produced by replicator machines like prints, sculptures, carvings etc. i do lots of similar tings yet get scoffed at for just wanting compensated for my time and material. its like the old "you make how much more than me an hour for no labor just thinking and telling others what to do!"

I used to do service and install of HVAC and appliances. done moon light service calls for extra income. had an education director customer with rent homes. he told me he didnt want to pay a service charge for each property just pay flat hourly rate with no travel fee. I said OK no service calls. next call I gave him bill with same fee as b4. he said "we agreed no service call" I said true, look what fee says. it was titled "Education surcharge" I said thats for my knowledge what to do besides labor for doing it. since he was also making a living from Education he got it and never complained again. lol

yeah, have you ever gotten an itemized bill from Dr or Hospital showing why your out patient procedure was a years income for most of the working class people? lol even insurance company dont anymore just a copple codes (some double billed too). because most people still would say that.

also don't forget maintenance costs. stuff breaks. i'm still crunching numbers for doing printing for various folks at my university. haven't really come out ahead yet on anything i've sold unfortunately. printer still needs a lot of work but any cash helps. folks keep coming back so i must be doing *something* right.

You'd be surprised how many people actually want prints when you're the only one offering ABS at a reasonable rate. My library wants $1 per cubic cm of material for ABS printing--ridiculous hahaha. Once my printer is more perfect I'll save a lot of time. Stuff that needs to fit doesn't always require post-processing, but occasionally it does. Eventually when my printer is more accurate this will be less of an issue...

if your only doing the occasional print you need to shift your thinking to how much am i making of each print. If its something your doing in your spare time your gonna break even easily.

if your doing it to make a living your going to need at least 5 well calibrated, reliable machines. with that you can turn around a 200 hour built time order in a week easy

just to supplement my hobby on fixed income

This is very interesting. I run a very small print farm at my house as a side business. I never really thought of offering services in the education field as "proctor_richard" has been doing, but I think I may just dig into that a little and do some research. What I've been doing so far with my printers is selling 3D printed parts on eBay , primarily for RepRap machines such as the Prusa i2 and Prusa i3. I currently have 4 printers (one SD4, one Robo3D, and 2 RepRap machines) and 2 more on the way before Christmas. The demand for these parts is definitely there, and sometimes, although I have 4 printers running 24/7, I cannot keep up with the demand. However, although the profit on these are ok, they take a lot out of you and the printers. A complete set sometimes take 20+ hours to build, and I only get about $15 - $20 of profit in return after all the fees, shipping, etc, on each one sold. I think I'm going to research what proctor_richard mentioned and look into that some more and maybe see if my local school would be interested, because to me, it makes much more sense to do that.

Romel

hey there proctor_richard, I'm based in the US. If you don't mind me asking, how did you land that gig? Did you just ask your local school to start, and then worked from that, or you knew someone? I'm thinking of following your advice and go with that route.