Hubs with excessive low prices are bad for everyone

[SOC3D]

@Matterthings José,

My calculations above show a real world operational cost for my hub operation. I believe I’m overpriced even at $.10 per cm3 as the calculations show I can make a profit in equipment and dollars at prices as low as $.05 per cm3.

The calculations from my other post below which I will expand upon here show that the CURRENT BASE PRICE already implemented by 3D Hubs is currently to high and may stifle future free market competition allowing another platform to encroach upon 3D hubs service.

Filament:

Recycled water bottles and other household plastics.

$0.00 per cm3

*It is important to note that the cost of filament could run into negative territory. If someone sets up a recycling center or sets up shop at a recycling center they could theoretically charge a small fee to recycle plastics which would yield them a negative cost per cm3 of filament.

Electric:

Solar or hydro power utilized for a home or another business.

$0.00 per hour (cost is written off for another entity)

Printer Depreciation:

Using modular design and true reprap philosophies the depreciation of a home made printer can easily reach less than 1% per month. Upgrades and new printers could be purchased for very little ($65-$100 using direct from china electronics and 3D printed parts)

Hourly or per CM3 cost of around $.005

3D Hubs Service Fee

Student Discount: Not offered to keep prices lower.

Labor and Profit: If this is a part time or ancillary business venture the printer would operate in an existing shop and simply bring in extra revenue. Very slim margins would be needed.

This scenario, which is not far fetched, would result in a per cm3 cost below THE CURRENT 3D HUBS FORCED BASE PRICE of $.01 per cm3 and $1 per order.

I would be willing to invest some money into a hub who wishes to operate this way and offer sub $.01 per cm3 prints.

[SOC3D]

Precisely.

[SOC3D]

Also off topic:

We actually print a ton of the Cube Gears off thingiverse for office workers to put on their desks. Every time we give one away we hear back that all visitors walk in, pick up the cube and start twisting it and asking questions. I ran into an issue a while back where I had dozens of spools of 10-100g of filament that I didn’t want to throw away and couldn’t use for orders so I just started printing pokemon and other little trinkets to give away.

It’s the same type of evangelism we did with bitcoin in 2010-2012 and continue today. We used to give out 10BTC ($30 at the time $6,000 now) silver physical bitcoins to promote awareness. Although I don’t think anyone will be selling a cube for 200X what they cost in a few years the goal of spreading awareness still applies.

[Matterthings]

Hello Miaviator

Your input is great.

3D hubs has operational costs and lives on the commission that they make on us. At $.10 per cm3 there is no business for them or for us.

We are not very different from a mechanic in a garage who has operational costs and charges a certain fee per hour and makes a profit with his hand labor, knowledge and even on the shipping of the spare parts he sales. Is that wrong or bad?

We all know how much a car mechanic charges and the same formula, as you have shown, should be used for makers with 3d printers.

We all need to feed our families and there is nothing wrong in making a profit.

We still believe there should be a BASE PRICE so we can all stand in common ground.

Regards,

José

[Iceman24k]

Here is what I should have wrote before all else lol!!! Sorry to all I have offended (if any at all)!!! I LOVE 3d Hubs and all of its community!

LOL Sorry But I have to add this lol, We are an international community!!! and so proud to be a part of this awesomeness!!!

(while maybe not proud to be a part of this conversation anymore) but guys We all get to share our opinions and that is part of what makes this community so great! The initial Post scared me and that is why I responded to it,( and read it three times). I am sorry if I misunderstood what you were communicating, but I also have a Young gentleman in my neck of the woods that started after I did, and OH My Goodness!!! WOW this kid (young adult)has blown everyone around here out of the water with his amount of work! But THAT IS FREAKIN COOL!!! I am astonished by him, and just downright impressed!!! He is kickin butt and taking Names lol, but I am super happy for him! I would Love to meet him, and my hat is off to him! also though I don’t feel threatened by him and I would hate for some entity to step in and tell him cannot do this anymore! It is his time, money, and life! Who would I be to tell him how to conduct his booming business, when it is clearly devouring mine lol, but I am serious, I am super stoked for him! also If I wanted I could do the same thing, and this is what keeps the prices fair for the CONSUMER.

Now mind that Price Control ect are different… But however I just don’t want anymore Price Floors, or ceilings and I am just down right against more regulations on pricing. I think the power of free will is awesome and the right to choose / set our own prices(and PRICE FLOOR) is a privilege, and A PRIVILEGE I LOVE! I cringe at the thought of someone telling what amount of monetary value I should project/impose/access upon myself. (this is what worried me originally)

I think 3d Hubs has made an Awesome Pricing System, with all the different options on how to calculate volume “bounding box” ect… , and Price wars are never fun when we are doing this for survival, but that is how most of this world operates. Competition can be friendly or it can be a Bear… good luck to all and HAPPY PRINTING

PS. This is what I Love we can all sit around and discuss and even argue occasionally or agree to disagree and AGREE!!!

and it all gets worked out and the misunderstandings normally fade away… It can be frustrating wanting jobs and constantly getting underbid, but I think there must be a better solution yet to come., like letting time straighten this out.or

You can always educate others as well drumming up new business…it can be a blast and enlightening to the community at the same time! If you need good quality clients, just a suggestion is start teaching seminars at your local libraries ect… CHEERS!

[Iceman24k]

Also LOOKING over a few things I WOULD LIKE TO SAY HOW IMPORTANT I THINK IT IS TO SUPPORT 3d Hubs!!! and to run every job through their site, especially Not encourage people to submit their Jobs through Email as this is fair to NO ONE PERIOD!!!

[SOC3D]

There IS A BASE PRICE already.

It is $1.00 per order and $.01 per cm3.

So we can all stand on common ground can we agree that there is a base price? Will you not agree with facts? Does your belief preclude you from reality?

Here is proof, evidence, facts: https://puu.sh/qr4Xi/6258c10ee4.png You can see this BASE PRICE for yourself as well. Just enter 0 into the per print and per cm3 boxes.

[Matterthings]

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!

[MrDoggss]

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.

[Monger]

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.

[Eugen_1]

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…

[SOC3D]

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?

[Eugen_1]

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…

[SOC3D]

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.

[Eugen_1]

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”

[EP3D]

NOPE. Free Market Capitalism will ALWAYS be the way to go.

[Bartkavelaars]

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.

[Perry_1]

OK, I have been watching this thread closely.

Many have said that reviews are the most important thing in customers selecting who to print from. This is dramatically false. Customers will assume prints are the same based on the category of print, and the #1 reason a hub is chosen is it’s location in the search results.

1. Reviews are not easy to see when comparing hubs. They really are not. You can see one review at a time when comparing printers.

2. Reviews do not affect results of where a hub shows up very much. They do not. Perfect reviews do not equal primary placement. In fact, not accepting prints, or customers canceling when you explain prints will not be optimum, affect ranking far more than reviews, as does location.

3. Customers who do get bad prints do not reviews as often. Simple as that. If you know a hub is doing lower quality prints, you will see they have less reviews. There is supporting science that reviews tilt towards the upper end, inaccurately reflecting the quality of the reviewed item.

Right now, bad hubs can easily get ranked first, based solely on number of prints. And ranking in the search is the number one reason folks in my area choose a printer, as I have been surveying them. It also does not help that 3dhubs states the first printer in the search is the best match. (as opposed to suggestd matches or best matches. So saying reviews over price is how customers choose hubs is naive.

In the US, buyer attitude is weighted towards price. (I know, I do this sort of research for a living). Our culture leans towards price as the primary determining factor in making a purchase. If the ranking system worked better, than it would help customers see beyond that, but the 3dhubs reviews do not inform a customer much.

That combined with the fact it shows only one review while comparing, means you can do 100 perfect prints, and one misinformed customer can post a bad review and put the brakes on.

[StefanThePro]

Completely agree. Having seen many hubs, from all over, reviews and the “system” is what truly determines what orders you get. Don’t forget that skimmers (hubs that purposely set the lowest price) end up with inexperienced clients and bad reviews more frequently, being inexpensive isn’t easy. Being critical of lean operations is however.

[wirlybird]

Pretty much the point I was going to make also. If they feel others are taking business away from them, then whose fault is it really? If you are losing customers maybe you need to re-evaluate your operation and not point fingers at others. If cheap hubs are doing crappy work they will go out eventually. It’s how it works.

Who’s to say that what you think a “base” price should be set at is what someone in another country would be ok with?

Even though what you propose is meant to sound noble and just it is really price fixing and solely meant to drive some out of business or force them to raise prices.