This, one thousand times.
If I’m not going to find other 3D printing services that offer something like the direct order widget to put on my website, I’m gonna make my own, but sure as eggs is eggs I won’t ever advertise 3Dhubs on my website (or anywhere else) ever again.
2 Likes
Not yet actually.
I mean, I’ve worded wrongly my first post, it’s not the sevice fee the problem, but it’s acutally the fact they decided to completely leave behind their core users, and as I’m reading elsewhere, this is becoming a Shapeways clone.
The cool thing was the order widget, and honestly i’m willing to pay that sweet 12.5% service fee on each order if this means I can still allow people to make purchase trough my website, but I totally see that not coming back.
If somehow I manage to create a working replica of what this website used to be, I’ll let you know. It’s a huge project indeed!
MM2004
14
This is so dumb I was very mad when you guys changed it in 2017 and now I can even print for anyone any more. What the heck! Is there any more websites I can use to print for customers please let me know!!!
Please don’t do this! It is not a good idea! People won’t like this, as it will not allow for such a free market, and will cause prices to hike. This is bad for the 3d printing community.
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I had a similar thought about building a replacement but what I was envisaging was more a single-tenant system which each small business could host their own version of. In fact one of the key points would be making it open and usable by all - i.e. all the things which made 3D Hubs what it was that they’ve turned their back on.
If there was a way to build both - a central site which could become a trusted destination but which could bring together a load of federated ordering platforms (each of which would be usable by itself also)… well… that would be quite something. Almost like what would happen if you took the current 3D Hubs platform, with each hub having their own site with an order widget on it, and turned it inside-out.
Literally just thinking out loud at this stage but I’m a developer so would definitely contribute what little time I could to building out something like this…
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The only similar site I know of is makexyz, but I don’t get any where near as many orders from them
Torvast
26
The only alternative i’ve found is Treatstock.com with a widget like 3dhubs.
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Of course that supposes we’re beggars… not a viewpoint I subscribe to 
You are right and your point is valid nonetheless, however I think perhaps now we’ve seen it go wrong (i.e. how the ultra-centralisation model can turn sour), we can redo it again but without this weakness.
Don’t worry, your choice of words was absolutely fine 
I agree that any solution is a good one at this point but what I mean is going forward I’d like us to find the right solution. Any solution would be good to get us there, but we should be careful to try and avoid reliance and lock-in now that we’ve seen how it can go bad.
That would be my perfect solution and one I definitely want to persue
It would be great to have some form of web applet to compute in real time the volume, the infill and the support material of the file, convert that to price and then this company would basically intermediate the payment between the customer and the 3D printing service.
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Interesting.
I utterly agree with you about the STL volume/infill/material/price calculation stuff and unfortunately I think getting something like that right and reliable is going to be the most challenging part.
In terms of payment though, my thoughts are that each hub (we need another name, but you know what I mean) would do their own. I.e. I could have my ‘hub’ site process payments through Paypal or Stripe or whatever. Then they could have their own processes etc and handle their own business and not have any weird rules about VAT or whether you’ve got the right kind of company…
Maybe we need both options, with it up to each hub to choose if they handle their own payments or if the central authority does it, or if they’re happy to handle either case. Customers could use that as part of their decision as to who to choose if they feel strongly one way or another.
Yeah, this is a really good idea!
If there was only a way to harness the price calculation routines of Simplify 3D…
Or if 3D Hubs bequeathed a solution to us as suggested on Twitter. Frankly I think it’s unlikely but I’d happily take a version of their algorithm from a couple of years back gifted to the open source community. It would take the sting out a bit for sure.
Does it actually have to slice? I mean the 3dhubs one doesn’t. Or at least doesn’t allow for producing gcode. I suppose it has to slice somewhat to calculate price tho. But it would only need to be very simple(or perhaps go all the way with it, to make your offering that much better).
Well, Speed would depend on quite a lot of variables. I don’t think that would be accurate unless the ‘hub’ can input their print speeds, acceleration etc.
Also, I think the current model of cost per volume of plastic isn’t ideal. It doesn’t take into account time spent printing etc.
If there was someway to maybe make octoprint plugin that keeps track of time of a print, then connect that to user account/hub. Then could charge by time spent on the print, and not just volume.
Also with a raspberry pi camera hooked up, could provide a stop motion video of the customers object being built.
I think letting the hubs input time spent could lead to dishonesty. And customers may not trust that either. I think if there was some sort of time tracking tool it would be much better, and more accurate. Also would allow for gathering actual data that could in turn be used for something.
