Hello, I’m new to 3D hubs and have sold a couple of prints. This has brought up a problem for me. 3D hubs calculates the volume without including provision for support material. On some models this may be 3 or 4 times the volume of the actual print. There’s no way I can make money selling like this. I have a Form1+ and the resin isn’t cheap. Unless I charge a ridiculous amout for the material (which looks bad when people are comparing hubs) then I can’t recoupe this cost. how do you deal with this? This will be a deal breaker if I can’t find a solution.
Thanks,
John
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Robin3D
2
Hi John,
Thank you for your message, as someone who loves to print on the Form1+ I know the resin is indeed quite pricy and I completely understand your concerns. As you can image probably image, calculating supports for all the different printers on 3D Hubs is quite complicated and this is something that we cannot do automatically for now. That’s why we are making the order page as flexible as possible for both customers and hubs. As the hub you are asked to review the model from the customer in the review stage and this is when you can explain to the customer (throught the comments) that in order to print the model, you will have to add supports to the print which will require additional material. You can manually add these costs to the order before the accepting the printing job.
I hope this was useful to you, please let us know if you have any additional ideas on how we can improve the order flow so you feel more comfortable using the system, it’s will the feedback from our hubs that we can continue to improve 3D Hubs.
Best,
Robin
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John,
Sometimes modifying de position of the print saves supportmaterial. But i agree that support is sometimes double the price, wich you can modify in the calculation also finishing
I often make suggestions to customer to print a part in two to reduce support materiaal.
regards
John
Hi guys,
To be honest, John talk about a real problem for the hubbers.
For me (and a lot of other hubs) the best way is to talk about a printing time price and not a volume.
There is an other problem : the difference between professional printer and the other. If you know what i mean… Making a difference could increase your reputation ^^
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Totally agree Nacere, while I am new to 3Dhubs, I have always used print time vs volume for my costing models. Even though there is a ratio between the two metrics, print time allows for the cost of the support material as well as infill. Currently I estimate my operational print cost, which includes material, electric and maintenance support cost, is approximate $4.80 per hour of print time. The higher resolution the print, the longer the time, however that does not mean more build volume or even material. Higher resolution = more print time = high cost. I can totally see with a Form1+ running ultra high resolution, the time factor + support material cost could be signficantly higher than simple build volume.
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Hi there,
I react to what has been said before. 
@nabooengineer you can set different prices per resolution. You can have a printer/resolution for your Hub.
@Modellus, @JDollaCzech and @3Dscaleworks, as @Robin3D said, the order page is now really flexible. Thus, you can download the file, add support trough Cura, and reupload the file. The new price will be calculated automatically.
Hope this helped a bit!
Julie
