I recently had a request to print a quite complex model. The model itself had 10.3cm^2, but I had to add another 13cm^2 for support structures. Not even this absolutely increased my print times, it also increased the material costs - it more than doubled it.
Which brings me to an interesting point…
3DHubs is calculating the price always on the model size, but never looks into the material that is needed for support structures.
Either their calculations should automatically add - at least - some basic support structures before calculating the material or they should allow the Hub to manually adjust the material used and send it back to the customer for approval.
Printing an order that will end up costing you more in material costs then the amount you would earn is not exactly ideal so I would advise every hub to do the following.
During the review step of the order, before accepting, download the models that were send in and load them in your own slicing software. Check if the material volume that was automatically calculated by our slicing process is 100% accurate. If this is not the case, you can easily adjust the material volume here:
Then, if the model requires supports for printing, you can add these extra costs to the order by selecting the “Add additional services” on the right hand side of the order page.
I understand that it would be ideal to have all of this automatized but due to the fact that we still have a relatively small team and dozens of different 3D printers/printing techniques on the platform we are a bit outnumbered on this front.
We’ll be working on this in the future but for now, I hope this system works for you.
On the contrary @xeno. 3Dhubs bases the cost on 20% infill. It is a source of some frustration to me that this means that we are put into the difficult position with customers of breaking the news to them that the cost will be higher than they’d been led to believe.
