Finally I activated my printer on 3D Hubs. I used it professionally for architectural maquettes and rapit prototyping.
I love the concept of 3D Hubs but I don’t like printing according to CM3 prizes. I would prefer to calculate prizes by quality (read print speed) and then by amount of material used. A CM3 can be printed massive or hollow, fast or slow and with a 100 layers or just 25.
Agreed, it would be really useful to be able to use weight in some way (perhaps combined with layer height) to calculate the price…
For example, my first assignment here where designed so that I had to use more support material to print it than the actual model used itself. It would have been more fair if the price where calculated in some other way than just the volume of the model.
3d Hubs sets the price with predefined settings, meaning 20% infill and (i guess) 1mm outer shells, they don’t calculate the full volume of the model but the volume of consumed plastic when printed with those settings.
If you want to have different prices for different speeds / layer heights you can either list your printer twice, once with high settings, once with low quality.
If you weight your filament you run into the problem, that different materials and even different colors have other densities. 3d Hubs has to know all densities to then convert the used volume (which they can calculate with the settings above) into weight.
If you have materials that are very heavy you can adjust your price accordingly. For example i take roughly 3 times as much money for metal blend materials since they have 3 times the density.
If a customer orders a cube with edge length of 5cm he doesnt have to pay 5x5x5x =125cm³ of material.
As most filaments are priced by weight when we buy them i have converted the price/kg that i know from the filament producer into price/cm³ and since for example Copperfill is 3 times heavier then normal PLA i have to take 3 times that price to account for the weight.
In the end you can also adjust your pricing when you discuss an order with a customer. If the customer wants 100% infill or support structure etc. or says that the print has to be printed at very slow speed you can then adjust the price for that specific model.
