This sounds awesome! Fear that it’s a bit ahead of us indeed, but can’t hurt to look forward, right? 
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It would be great having pricing details based on the print height. With DLP printers like B9Creator and Autodesk Ember the printing time only depends on layer thickness and the height of the print. For example, if you have to print a long and thin part that must be oriented vertical it would take a very long time with a minimal volume.
An xy resolution parameter could be interesting as well because limits a lot the number of parts that can be printed at once, but this can be configured only in a few printers like B9
I agree with those asking for a time-based pricing option. I once had a company contact me directly to print some objects that were fairly large. They wanted to supply their own materials for a reduced print cost. I did reduce the price for them, but through the experience I found that the biggest factor for me in price was time rather than materials.
I know that my own time isn’t really involved – particularly since I am using Octoprint to be able to upload and remotely start a print. However for large or fine detail models, a lot of time is necessary to complete a print which means my printer is kept from other uses for myself and from other customers.
Filemon,
I appreciate the effort you have put in to make things easier for the customer.
However, I cannot begin to express my disappointment that you have removed the single most important part of the ordering process. By removing our ability to enter the sliced volume of prints, you COMPLETELY nullify all the work we put into updating our printer pages!
Why have us modify our printers, resolutions, materials, startup costs, and other items, when we will just ignore all that and have to manually calculate the quote for the customer??
Again, you have removed a key functionality that I have relied on since I started printing for 3D Hubs back in January. My opinion of 3D Hubs has dropped considerably because you either fail to comprehend what’s involved here, or are just simply ignoring our feedback. I think you underestimate the importance of being able to enter sliced volumes into our orders.
Agreed. I always bill customers by weight of printed object, including supports. Filament is sold by the kilogram, so the only reasonable materials markup is weight-based.
In theory, volume cost would be proportional to weight cost in objects printed at 100% infill, but unless you’re printing firearm parts, you probably don’t need 100% infill in most cases. Using lower infill parameters greatly complicates the calculation, because you have an outer shell that’s solid, enclosing an inner space that’s mostly hollow. Some slicers like Cura will tell you how many meters of filament the print will use, and estimate the filament weight in grams. These estimates are not always very accurate. For that reason, I generally provide a price estimate, print the object, weigh it, and then provide a precise price calculation for the customer, based on my setup fee (currently $10 per order) plus my price per gram.
On an unrelated note, I’ve discovered an annoying thing about the “3D print on demand” business. Most prospective customers don’t have a very firm grasp of what’s printable and what isn’t, because they don’t own a 3D printer and have generally never used one themselves. People try to get me to print objects that have insanely fine details (e.g. human eyelashes), or planes that have a thickness of zero. My general feeling is that 3D print on demand will become less of a thing as the cost of 3D printers continues to drop. Once anyone who wants a 3D printer owns one, the idea of paying someone else to print something will be seen as silly.
This updated version is confusing on the customer view for my hub. I have RepRap printers of different configurations (print area, nozzle size, etc.) set at different prices, I cannot even tell which printer is what on the customer’s view. Where can I put this information? I have looked at other hubs, and see each color is in it’s own block of information, make for a very long page and hard to follow.
@wei_sheng_3139 yes, it is understood. I guess 85% of the feedback on this thread comes down to that feature. So, we need to reconsider. The dev guys will have a look this week. Again, sorry for the inconvenience. Cheers!
Hi all!
We’ve taken your feedback and will update some core pricing features this week. Two changes I would like to highlight, because of the discussion on this thread:
- The possibility to adjust sliced volume on the order page will return (!)
- The reference models on your Hub profile will be fixed
Let me know if any questions remain.
Cheers
Hi all (@Silvester @Christianna_Tay @Aja @useemtasty @wei_sheng_3139 @MtmrtsN @LaGi),
We deployed the first update and I think most of the feedback on the page is now fixed. Yes! Please have a look and it would be great if you could let me know if it works for you now.
Cheers!