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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
i totally agree. Printers on 3D hubs are advertising way to cheap. I just sent a model to be printed at a big toronto company and it would have been $2300 to print. If i were to print the same thing on 3D hubs it would be around $200 probably. People cannot afford to have 3D printing business because 3D hubs prices are so cheap. Everyone will go to 3D hubs for prints and the 3D printing companies will go bankrupt. i just bought a $5000 printer and have it on 3D hubs but at the rate of what i might make from 3D hubs i will be paying for the printer for 3 years and thats not including other costs or a profit. Something needs to be done before the business in 3D printing is just not possible.