What’s everyone charging as a rate to do 3D printing?
I’ve got an Ender 3D V2 and a Creality 10S Pro V2
I’ve been told $1.00 per hour…
Does that sound right, too high, too low? Would you charge less for black than other colours? Is it dependent on what printer I put the job on?
WAY LOW.
15$ for the first hour and 10$ an hour for the next 9 then 5$ an hour after that. This is what I had to pay when the printer I bought for a job refused to print.
Remember if you are running professional services you will need more than the printer and filament. Insurance, business registration expenses, rent, (always wise to pay rent even if it is your basement also pay your self a wage it helps keep business and personal separate.)
The prints I got were fantastically good. Smooth and perfect. When you are paying $200-300 a print it must be better than what you could do buying a printer and doing it yourself. I certainly don’t resent paying for the service, I do resent the poor quality of the artillery printer I ended up rebuilding it. I would have been better throwing it away.
Are you sure you can provide high quality prints with those printers?
I have just been doing things for friends so far for the RC (Radio Control) car community, and I do have a business that is registered, with a CRA ID.
The stuff that I have printed so far is good quality.
Thanks for the comment!
I don’t price by the hour, but $1 hour seems low, especially if you are printing in any special filaments.
When I price my prints majority of the cost is based on material consumption (g’s of filament or ml’s of resin used), then electricty consumption and print time comes last.
Also, if it’s a broken .stl they supply or they need a new 3D model made I charge for the model prep time, model repair time or model creation time.
I first work out approximetely how much it would cost me in materials and inputs to print the item, then I take that cost and multiply it by a set factor I have.
Then I make sure that with the price I came up with that I have some wiggle room to covers initial costs, the costs if I have multiple failed prints, and I have enough left over to make a profit im happy with.
I do it this way because I originally starting printing for the public as a way to pay for more filament, I could cover the cost of a spool with 1 or 2 prints then had the rest of the spool to enjoy for myself. Then when I was overwhelemed with the amount of spools I had, I started to buy more printers and resin lol.
You also should be also be amortizing the cost of the printers into your prices.
Your 100% right, I should be amortizing the printers in my quoted prices and I would recommend doing that to anyone looking to build thier own pricing formula.
I have been doing it on my own by using any extra revenue made (the extra money from no failed prints) to pay off the printers initial cost on my balance sheets, but I never actually included in my quoted prices.
I’ve been meaning to rework my pricing formula for a bit; I’ve also been meaning to work in a cost for wear & tear for certain parts in somehow.
When I started I really only wanted more spools of filament for my personal printer so I didn’t even think about added the initial printer cost to my prices.
I think it highly depends on who your target market is and what material you are printing with. We’ve seen rates much higher when printing higher end polymers such as Nylon. I would shop around a few different printing sites to get an idea of what people are charging. Start with 3D Hubs and Shapeways to get an idea.