How am I off topic? I respect facts. The more that a point of view is supported with them, the more respect it deserves.
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(off topic on my part but) You Are Awesome! I am speechless, Doesn’t it feel awesome to give the prints away, and see the sparkles in the eyes of the ones on the receiving end! That warms my little heart, I love giving away little prints… I give away probably about 20 makerbot fish per week(and some Big Prints as well)…just for fun(to spread the word and to invoke thought
! People are absolutely amazed and pluss it is something they remember! I have had some coming back asking to Buy more Fish afterwords lol. But the main thing is; I am giving away knowledge and Ideas, and if I can influence one person out of all of them to follow their dreams and do something they love, then I have won in my eyes. It is a priceless feeling to give a child a 3d printed object, that would otherwise never be able to afford one. The children are our future, and children and adults both seem to be blown away by the power of computing when it manufactures a solid real object at the click of a button.
I was thinking the same thing too, I bumped up against something similar before. Trying to drop my prices to build up my feedback. Miaviator I would love to shake your hand sometime for real! You seem like an awesome person. Keep on Geekin On! and HAPPY PRINTING my friends! 
It is thoughtful Kind Hearted People That Make this world tolerable. Thank You
let’s keep 3d printing evolving and make it available to all…for the rich and the poor! and everything in between…
Hello Miaviator!
Thank you for https://puu.sh/qr4Xi/6258c10ee4.png
The limits are unrealistic: who prints at $500 per cm3?
That $0.01 is what allows Hubs to put very low prices and it should be raised to something that reflects true operational costs.
I just hope that all of this has been read by someone at 3D Hubs.
Thank you for your inputs.
Have a great weekend!
Part of the problem with this whole discussion is people trying to put apples and oranges in the same basket. A hub operator who spends $3000 on equipment, will obviously have a much higher cost structure than the one who spends $400. Do you expect the price of a print to be the same? No. Quality? Possibly, but unlikely. Either way, how can you expect the lower cost hub to charge more just so the other can “cover costs”?
This brings up another point. Hobbyist versus business. Do you treat your hub as a business? IS IT a business? Operating a business is apples to the hobbyists oranges when looking at a hub. As a hobbyist, if I just want earn a little extra to support running my printer, and am unconcerned with “operating costs”, why should I be forced to charge more?
Businesses and hobbyists aren’t competitors, they are separate worlds in the 3D printing universe. As such, setting a base price that favors the higher cost hubs, will severely hamper the rest of a community like 3DHubs.
To the OP: You wrote 2 thing I think undermine your position.
1. “If he would charge the correct price…” correct according to who? Correct according to what criteria? “Correct” is a very subjective term.
2. “Regardless, a client should pay a fair price for the work that it takes to deliver a 3d print.” Again, fair according to who?
Overall, the 3d printing market is being flooded with people and companies willing to sell their services and products. There are too many options out there to think a business-like hub could, or should, be compared to (or operated like) a hobby one. Apples and oranges.
A product is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. It is up to the seller to determine if producing the product is worth the price.
I agree with this, but you can’t blame people. They don’t know good quality from bad quality prints. Most people would choose a mediocre print from a low-cost FDM machine for $15 vs a super high resolution print from a top of the line SLA machine for $30. I have 7 reviews on my hub, but ever since hubs near me starting doing cheap prints for $5 - $15 the orders stopped.
OK… There is a lot of going back and forth on this thread… There are a lot of good points that we should all take under consideration…
With th this in mind and to satisfy both the hobbyist and the pro, I suggest splitting 3D Hubs into 2 separate entities… Keeping 3D Hubs as it is for hobbyist and create a secondary sister site, something like “Pro 3D Hubs” that ONLY OFFERS AND ACCEPTS high end equipment, top of the line materials and people that run their Hub as a business…
This is way a customer can choose from the get go if they want to run their part through a hobby hub or a professional business Hub that has tons of experience, and that offers guarantees and top of the line service…
As as it was earlier portrayed, mixing apples and oranges, makes it more difficult for a customer to correctly choose between hobby or pro, creates anger and commotion between hubbers as we have seen in this post, and reduces the chances for order for both hobby and pro hub. Not to mention all hubs that have been “generically” setup, that have no tangible description, project images, reviews, or links to other social media, negatively impact the overall image of 3D Hubs… The quick fix for this would be that any hub that has been inactive for more then 60 days is automatically disabled until it is either fully populated with the above mentioned info, or otherwise confirmed to be active by its owner…
I have 7 running printers. One is a $5,000 fusion 3d F400 within 90 days I’ll likely add a Markforged. I offer guarantees, refunds if a customer is not satisfied or if I’m not satisfied, free reprints, free advice and settings, bulk discounts, emergency prints, on site training and free printer repairs. I’m a hobbyist with several years experience and spend at least 4-8 hours a day with the printers. I also have 4 part time helpers with 3D printing experience. I offer prints starting at $.10 per cm3 and maxing out around $.25 with a $1 startup fee. As of now I’m not losing money. I’m also not a teenager living with my parents, my last few jobs were CEO, General Manager, Director of IT. All for international companies. Am I a hobbyist hub because this is a hobby? Or a professional hub because I stand by my work have experience and use high end FDM printers?
Well it is up to you what you call your hub. The cheapest printer I have is 10,000 and the most expensive 500,000… Having customers from a wide range of industries ranging from Architechts to Aerospace Companies and even DARPA. I decided to make make a professional living out of this rapidly evolving technology. Having a multitude of printers with different technologies, I consider my hub a pro-hub, having years of experience, and multiple employees, ranging from designers to engineers to technicians. As you probably already gathered, 3D hubs is not my main avenue of revenue, and I wouldn’t mind offering my services throug this site as well. The part I’m having issues with at the moment is that there are a lot of imitators and wannabes that think that they offer the best for less. In theory there is nothing wrong with this theory, however they don’t seem to care much for or understand this additive manufacturing business, as professionals can… From what you have described, to me you sound more like a pro rather then a hobbyist, having multiple printers with different technologies, years of experience and great customer care, your hub and services would prosper more on a sister Pro 3D Hubs site. A site where beginners cannot interfere and infringe on your and other hubs like you services and reputation. This was the only reason I suggested a Pro site, because this way a customer can decide from the beginning if they want to spend less and hand over their work to hobbyists, or pay slightly more and expect nothing but the best…
Are you printers a part of the 3D hubs HD program? Which is basically supposed to be a distinguishing factor between hobby level machines FDM and SLA and professional grade SLS and other technologies? I can’t imagine you are running a 500k FDM printer. Also with those machines I highly doubt we compete with each other and the OPs hub looks to be FDM/SLA.
No I don’t have a 500k FDM printer, and no I have not yet listed my SLS machines yet… I have set up a few professional FDM printers on 3D hubs, the big “guns” are still not listed because I’m not sure I want to dedicate those machines here just yet… The idea of 3D Hubs is great but it is still in development as I was told by a staff member… My other SLS printers aside, my FDM machines are professional enough to offer HD on their own… Printing at the highest resolution the parts are so precise and clean that they almost look as they just came out of injection molding… Personally I’m all about quality and service… You might remember the saying " A Picture is worth a thousand words" with me… “A part is worth a thousand pictures”
NOPE. Free Market Capitalism will ALWAYS be the way to go.
I too have a new-ish hub which seems to stay “under the radar” since the opening > opened for 3 months, had zero orders. I tried a 20% discount offer for the first 10 orders via a post on this forum with no response. After that I cut all my prices in half, just to see if it would attention, still zero orders. I’m a professional engineer using the Ultimaker 2+ for my work so high quality prints are obvious, but somehow it seems pretty hard to get orders (in my area at least). I have to agree with TruNorth, give everybody the option to set their own prices otherwise it will be impossible for new people to make a (tiny) business out of their hub.