Last week we updated our Hub pricing system, making it a lot more advanced. We’ve already got tons of questions over the weekend so time to do a quick run through.
Let me start by putting out a statement; your Hub price has NOT changed. The update allows you to do more advanced price setting but we didn’t make any changes to the price with the update itself. Ok, here we go!
First, have a look at your printer overview on “My Hub” or directly https://www.3dhubs.com/my-dashboard/hub/printers 10. Here you can check which of your printers are currently online, toggle on/off, or add printers. For this example, let’s look at my Ultimaker 2
Completion time - this will be shown in the search result for customers and can be used as filter when customers have a deadline
Materials - Add, remove, or edit materials for my printer. All of the discussed advanced pricing options apply on materials. So different materials can have different pricing options. For this example, I’ll take ABS.
This is where the advanced features kick in. For the current view I haven’t made any changes just yet, so default is shown.
Let’s go through it top to bottom:
Colors - You can set any color, or even come up with names. Just bare in mind that these are the colors the customer sees and will use as filter when searching for a Hub. Therefore I would recommend using basic color descriptions (yellow, green, white) instead of “sunlight flare” for example
Bulk Pricing Reduction - You can set a fixed discount for prices above a certain treshhold. For example, checkboxing this feature allows me to set a 15% discount on orders above “$25”. This means the every $1 above $25 will be discounted to $0.85, making me more competitive for bigger orders. The first $25 will be fully charged in this example.
Minimum Order Value - If a customer places an order below your Minimum Order Value, the price shown will automatically increase to match this minimum value. You will not receive orders below this price point.
Moving on to Layer heights. You can set multiple layer heights per material, pricing them each individually. Key here is to set the right expectations, don’t set a resolution which you cannot deliver. The coolest thing to focus on here though is the New Pricing Detail setting. We’ve added quite a few options, which , depending on your kind of printer are vital for accurate pricing.
Fixed pricing details:
First print - The costs of your first print. Same as startup cost. Theoretical example, if a customer would place an order of 1 print with no volume or surface area whatsoever, the first print price would be the final price.
Subsequent Prints - The added cost for each subsequent print. For example, a customer would like to print 8 parts in total (it doesn’t matter if they’re the same or not). The calculation for the “base price” would then be: First print value + 7x Subsequent prints value. Of course, on top of this base price we must add any of the other pricing details mentioned below.
Pricing details based on geometry:
Sliced volume - The material volume used for printing, priced per cubic centimeter (cm3 = volume). Depending on the model, the average slicing infill is ±20%. So twenty percent of the object volume is needed in material volume to make the print. With this Pricing detail enabled, the customer will pay for the exact amount of material used in the print.
Object Volume - This is the total volume of the object, before slicing. In other words, the “sliced volume with 100% infill”. Useful for SLA prints for example (e.g. Formlabs) that print 100% infill.
Bounding Box Volume - The volume calculated by basically taking a “cube” of width x height x depth of the part’s dimensions. Imagine capturing the part in the smallest possible box. This feature is especially useful for printers where the bounding box is a leading figure for determining cost. For example, with Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), the cost price per prints heavily depends on how many prints you can get printed in one go. Bounding box is a useful feature in this case.
Surface Area - Pricing based on the surface of a print. Useful when pricing for hollowed out prints, if sliced volume becomes inaccurate for the actual cost involved. Some SLS providers use this feature in their pricing.
Can we get a feature for material/color choices per part? I’ve had a few orders where people want different materials and colors for a single order.
For instance printing Pocket PiGRRL by adafruit - Thingiverse 3 - there will be at least ABS or PLA ( or other ) in one color and then ninjaflex/semiflex of a different color.
So far I’ve only had a few orders but imo this is something which would be nice to get baked in to the order as text
I just triple-checked some things and noticed that (at least with this order, which was already having TBD issues before that was miraculously fixed) this quote is not being calculated correctly… or maybe it is? This is seriously super confusing, and way less intuitive than things used to be. My price for ABS is .75 per cubic cm. According to this order, this part is 5.7 cubic cm (or is that for all 4 parts??? Really unclear!). Either way, this new calculation system is all messed up…
I admit this is unclear. I went into the order an found the cause. If you hover over the “i” it says that typical FDM volume is 3,1cm3 and for most other printers it’s 5.7cm3. It shows the latter where it should have shown the first (bug).
Taking the 3,1cm3. We have 4 parts, so 4 x 3,1 = 12,4 cm3, multiplying this by 0.75 / cm3 gives $9.3, which is correct (there’s some rounding off in the shown volume so minor variation is possible).
So, admittedly, we need to fix the bugs, but you can be reassured that the pricing system itself is correct. Hope this solves!
This is still very counter-intuitive, and taking away the Hubs’ abilities to adjust part volume just seems crazy. Like others have noted in this and other threads, I have had to adjust the part volume on pretty much every order I have received (20+ orders) because the 3D Hubs estimate was not matching up with my part volume estimates (which come from my slicing software that I set up for my printer). This new system makes this kind of adjustment much more difficult and confusing, not only for your Hubs, but for customers who want transparency in their orders. Sorry, but these changes all just seem so sloppily implemented…
Cool, thanks. One feature I’d still like is to be able to offer “rush processing.” Right now, I just list my printers as multiples. Some with smaller lead-times but higher startup prices. Also, it is often confusing for people when I tack on fee for “parts cleanup.”
We should have “additional services.” Be a prompt at time of order.
Is it possible to provide hooks into the back-end slicing engine that 3D Hubs uses for estimating product sliced-volumes?
I imagine it would require a bit of work, but if you were able to do this, we could enter in our default slicing parameters on our printer pages and at least have the 3D Hubs estimate come closer to our own individual estimates.
It would also be nice to have an option for support material generation estimates, either by a checkbox or an automatic guess by the slicer.
In any event, we’ve lost an important functionality when we are no longer allowed to enter in our own sliced volume into orders.
Yes, we need to be able to manually enter values. Basically, all of my prints I end up manually reorienting and building support. So, an automated “support cost estimator.” Wouldn’t be super accurate either.
I agree with over 30+ order I am consistently getting volume underestimated on all of my orders to the point where I think 3Dhubs is doing it intentionally to make order go through and slip it by hubs. I have ALWAYS cross-checked it with several programs including Simplify3D and Netfabb and they’ve always underestimated the volume by maybe 20%. Its horrible in terms of business because customers get a price and then get disappointed when the new price comes through and understandably so. Why can’t we just get accurate volume measurements that we can adjust?
I agree with over 30+ order I am consistently getting volume underestimated on all of my orders to the point where I think 3Dhubs is doing it intentionally to make orders go through and slip it by hubs. I have ALWAYS cross-checked it with several programs including Simplify3D and Netfabb and they’ve always underestimated the volume by maybe 20%. Its horrible in terms of business because customers get a price and then get disappointed when the new price comes through and understandably so. Can’t we just get accurate volume measurements that we can adjust?
Jep, I can see your frustration. I’m taking this up with the dev guys and will report back shortly. It will take a bit to make adjustments. Please let me know if other issues arise
A lot of downsides of the update have been discussed already and I think there will be some improvement in the future.
From my point of view there are two important things that should be subject to change:
1. Editing materials, colors and the related prices take much more effort than before. It would be nice if there were an improvement that protects the hubs from doing more work than before.
2. The color listing should show real colors instead of names. It doesn’t matter if a customer reads ‘sunlight flare’, ‘bright orange’ or just ‘orange’. He will never have the correct expectation and it is always better to see colors instead of reading their names. Most relevant filament manufacturers can provide us images of their products and they will help you with this for sure (I actually asked 2 manufacturers and they were pleased to help).
I would like to see a time-based option as well. I usually charge my non-3dhubs clients by the hour. This makes far more sense for me, since I am not all that fussed about the plastic content; some jobs use little plastic but take ages to print, especially if I am using a 0.15mm nozzle.
Hi, why we are still missing grams as price calculation. SLA, Poly printers they using grams not cm. material is sold in kg not meters? As you know 1cm of one material (glass) is different than other (Tango)
What about pricing for support material? That seems like it would be difficult to determine but a useful feature nonetheless. I know i have lost jobs when i quoted the extra $ for support used.
same with pricing via time. Large prints, complex objects, extra tall prints can have a small surface or volume but take a long time to print due to z height thinking about this would be useful.
I imagine this would be really hard, but if 3hubs ran a web version of say cura or simplify that picked optimal orientation for object based on our submitted profiles inc support, infill etc then we could have option to dl the gcode in addition to stl . Obvs we all have our fine settings and preferred slicers but it could be interesting approach.
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.
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.
