Feature Update: Hub Pricing

[marcuswu]

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.

[eckerj]

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.

[lyratron]

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.

[Denny_1]

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.

[Filemon]

@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!

[Filemon]

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

[Filemon]

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!

[Bram]

Hey @Flabou2! In order to do this you can use the Object volume. It should correspond linearly with the weight. You can check the density of your material with your supplier. Currently our catalog of materials doesn’t contain accurate information on these densities. As soon as it does we can start to supply this information for you.

Cheers!

[Bram]

Hey @meagan_mason_75, what factors would you need to have taken into account? Currently you are already able to take the amount of volume and amount of prints (first print, subsequent prints) into account for pricing. I understand these are only rough indicators of printing time but nonetheless helpful. Any suggestions for this would be taken into account, cheers!

[altometer]

Good morning there! How would I go about demoing these new features? I took a peek at the hub options and I don’t appear to have any new pricing options on my dropdown lists for filaments. I also don’t have any new orders currently to take a look at potential changes to the volumetric pricing.

[Press_Fab]

i would like to see time, hours or minutes taken into account as a pricing strategy. i.e. large, tall prints take longer than prints that a large on the x and y but not the z.

so either a height surcharge beyond a certain point, an option to price by time, so X currency per hour / minute etc, or some effort made to educate customers that some types of prints will be expensive because of the time it takes to make them rather than the material cost which might be small.

[ArturoGR]

I have just read all the thread and totally agree with lyratron and TypeR, and the guys in the end talking about considering the time required to print an order with FDM printers. (I am sorry guys, this will be a long comment.)

For 3DHubs, up to now, I have considered start-up price to be equivalent to 1 hour printing and the $/ cm3 to be $ / 1 gram weight of material to be used. This is to say I neglected the cm3 dimension and replace it with gram. I need not to know the density of the material. All I know is how much does it costs me per Kg or g. Suppliers do not provide density information.

In the end of September I commented on this issue to the support person asigned to me:

"…1. 3D Hubs quotes on a startup price per job. On the other hand, I cannot charge per job since I estimate a price per hour-machine (this is the number of minutes the printer will take to print the order) plus material used for the printout plus delivery conditions.

I am considering the startup price to be equivalent to one hour printing, then I add up to the price the fee related to the extra-time needed to finish the print. This is the startup fee times the number of hours (or minutes) required to print the object.

"…4. Also in 3D Hubs base quotaton, volumen of the object is considered. But, softwares like Cura, provide an accurate amount in grams of the material to be used. "

(If not accurate at least it gives a very good approximation. I have compared several times by weighing the printout.)

Popular slicers like Cura provide estimated information on time and amount of material to be used, this allows to easily estimate a price. I think estimating the price per job is very inconvenient since it does not consider the time required to complete the job. And, on the other hand, estimating the material cost per volume may give a good aproximation when you do not have slicer sofware at hand or when you are on the street and people ask you for a price. But if you have slicers that provide time and weight info, then why not to take adavantage of that?

In my opinion, Hubs (or Hubbers ?) should be free to fill out a simple form depending on the type of printer they use FDM, SLS, etc. In the CNC industry they charge for the time required to machine a piece. It should be the same with 3D printing. No need also for different quote for high quality printings since high quality printing always take much more (?) time to print. As a result, a high quality printing will be always more expensive. The same as with large printings.

About considering weight or volume for material cost, I think both options should be considered in the form. Not just volume. It will be hubber’s(?) decision to choose the method that better suits him/her.

Additional costs is another issue to talk about.

Make it simple.

[eckerj]

Hi Filemon,

Thanks for making the recent changes to the ordering system and giving back the ability to enter sliced object volumes. I see some other great suggestions in this thread (especially the volume/time/mass options), but I’ve received my first order since the fixes and it’s workable for me now

Thanks again

[Stan_Baldwin]

Your giving the customers to much room to screw up with these settings. I have dealt with many that think I print out of thin air and have prices that cheep. Going by cm3 was cumbersome but worked for FDM printing (I figured it from the density of the filament). Now trying to sell by bound volume and surface area is just asking for trouble. Especially when customers don’t understand bridging, brims, and supports. That add more cost to the print. I’ve had all my files come in needing some extra material that the customer did not factor in.

If you want to make some changes, make mass the way to price a print. We buy and use filament by the kg / g, we can check it quickly on a scale for the final amount used, and shipping is calculated by mass. This will help us correctly price our print, because I’m shortchanged when you take orders by volume. Your program underestimates the volume of a print consistently, especially when we don’t have all the parameters needed to gauge the true size (shell thickness, infill, etc…)

If I have a choice I’m sticking with cm3 for pricing.

Also I’d like to be paid by time. I’m doing an order now that will take 2-3 weeks. That is a lot of time to tie up my one printer, and I’ll have problems if someone else places an order. Even though the customer pays for the material, that is nothing compared to labor cost.

[Filemon]

Cheers @wei_sheng_3139, happy to hear that

[StephanG]

Great new update with the 3 different Marvin sizes!

[Rifle]

Can you add an “infiltration” or “sealant” option to the additional fee portion.

That would greatly help us using powder based 3D printers.

I don’t use support material, but I do seal the parts after print and there is a definite cost to this.

The best way to estimate this cost would be a factor times the surface area.

thanks,

Rifle Creek

[Bram]

Hey! you should already be able to select surface as one of the components to base your pricing on!

[Bram]

Hey! Time to print really differs from technology to technology. I do recognise that time to print and labour would be great components to base your price on. Will take this into account!

[Mitch_1]

so what happened to adding additional costs for more than %20 infill, and if support is needed as with most standard extruder type 3D printers? also I dont see my material costs per c3 anymore, what happened to that?