so i am planning on starting a 3d printing service here in Oregon and i am curios as to how much i should charge a job. i have studied several posts on reddit as to costs and pricing but i can barely make heads or tails of the equations they are using and it seems that every one uses a different calculation, so i am curios as to what a lot of people on this site use to create a estimate and quotes for product? also should i charge more for sanding and finishing of parts? any info it really helpful. thanks for your time.
The way 3D hubs sets pricing is done in two parts. First a price for the filament used, then a price per job like an initial price.
Just think of it as a taxi fare, there is a payment that remains the same (initial cost), then a charge for every mile/ km you travel (filament used cost). These then combine to give your fare.
I would recommend you do something similar. For filament usage charge slightly above what it would have cost you in filament to cover the running costs as well. Then you can set a price per print. You can charge extra for higher resolution prints, different materials and the way you finish the product (sanding).
Its completely up to you whether you charge extra for finishes as extra labour is involved. Just remember people are sometime willing to pay extra for a high quality product
For pricing, I essentially set what I thought was just low enough to compete with Hubs in my area, but high enough that it covered the basics (energy, time, filament for FDM or resin & tank for SLA) and still provided a decent cushion for failed prints and profit. I took what my raw material cost was in terms of either grams or mL (since filament is sold be the kg and resin by the liter) then multiplied it by a set factor for each resolution I offer. A 100 micron print takes a lot more time than a 300 micron print, and that’s time I can’t use for other orders and more energy I have to pay for, so it costs more. I then used the density of the material to convert the weighted cost (which was in $/mL or $/kg) back to the volume cost Hubs uses ($/cm3). These cost factors were played with and adjusted until my costs were competitive with others. This gave me very defined costs for every material & resolution combination I can provide, which makes it very easy to run the Hub.
I’m in the NY metropolitan area so my overhead costs to operate are higher than someone in a rural area like upstate NY. I have to charge more to make sure my overhead needs are met, but so does everyone around me so it balances out in the end. You really just need to compete within your local base, and you can always increase prices slightly once you have a good customer base and reputation. Most people are willing to pay more for quality, and if they’re not, they probably aren’t customers you want to work with.
I generally set my start-up costs equal to or just a little bit lower than my minimum order requirement for my FDM style printer, and higher for my SLA printer because it’s more work to get new resin into the SLA and it’s messy. I do bulk discount for all orders over $100, which really seems to help balance costs as orders get more expensive (costs for the customer grows like crazy as an order gets larger), and I include certain services for “free” when the order reaches a certain pre-defined value (i.e. support removal free after $XX order cost). I always charge additionally for post-processing of the print because it’s time consuming. I do all of my sanding/priming/polishing by hand to make sure details of a part aren’t lost so it does take awhile, but the results speak for them self.
