Feel free to discuss the recent 3D Hubs announcement here.
Before you do, if you’re a Hub, please have a look at the related FAQ on the topic here 108.
There are 167 replies with an estimated read time of 25 minutes.
This is what I’ve tried to reply to your mail today regarding the shutting-down of 3Dhub’s actual hubs
This is overwhelmingly stupid to be honest;
There are other platforms that request way less service fee, and are open even to the student which is trying to pay for his university fees by printing stuff for people online.
Thanks for restricting what used to be a nice platform only to a few people.
Thanks again
Is there going to be any process for hubs that may be short on 1 item to appeal not being admitted into the program?
Aside from being 1 order short (easy to fix) my responses are 16 minutes over the “limit” while everything else is perfect.
It would seem a bit counter productive to not allow a maker simply for that when reviews and comments are excellent.
After all, isn’t 3dhubs looking for quality parts?
@Robin3D Thank you for setting up this thread. Although disheartened by the announcement made this morning, I was more disheartened by what appeared to be suppression of threads discussing this topic. Kudos for keeping the open discussion rolling on this.
Can you explain how are the performance metric system is calculated? In some cases, customer places an order and wishes to cancel the order. How is the performance metrics is calculated in this case?
Or
If a customer places an order and 3D hubs says the part is printable, but in some cases some of the FDM printers cannot print it. In this case the Hub has to cancel it. How do you calculate the performance metric system in this case?
In another case, Customer places an order in the afternoon, but i get messages in the midnight. How do you calculate the response time in this case ?
Makers in 3D Hubs follow strict guidelines given by 3D Hubs. So, It is very important to explain how the metric system is calculated.
If a business wants to maintain standards and follow core values, it is equally important that you should value your service providers at all levels.
I request you to provide detail reasoning on how the metric system is calculated in different cases.
All I can say is wow! This is the biggest F U to those who helped you become what you are in the first place. The whole point of 3D Hubs in the first place was to find local people to print your parts.
You are effectively removing all hobbyists from the platform because it’s pretty much impossible for us to hit the reply times to qualify which I believe is the only thing I don’t qualify for. Most orders I get are while I’m at work or sleeping.
I have been with 3D Hubs since the first day they made it available on the west coast. I’ve represented them at maker faires and at colleges as an ambassador for events they set up to advertise the service. Those I did free of charge because they were such a good thing for the community.
Guess everyone has to cut the throats of the ones that made them great and get greedy eventually.
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.
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!
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.
I had a similar thought 10 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…
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…
I love this idea
The only similar site I know of is makexyz, but I don’t get any where near as many orders from them
The only alternative i’ve found is Treatstock.com 46 with a widget like 3dhubs.
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.
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 24. 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.
Well. I was thinking maybe you have the slicer calculate volume, and make a charge based on that. And let customers know that there will be additional charge at the end for time. And that once they put in their CC, they will be charged time at the end. And maybe give some sort of estimate.
Then only allow customers to dispute, or request refund for part. But they agreed to pay a rate for time at the beginning and are given an estimate then to. Just like any sort of hourly contact work.
Hi
I also want to join in this discussion after hearing this ridiculous news from hub.
calculating volume would work (calculate volume and estimate it to be with infill of 30% example or 40%) it would be doable I believe. (oh and this volume slicing can be done with python at least)
Folks, at the risk of being shouted down, I do think that if you continue to use this thread to only discuss your own plans for building another platform, 3DHubs would be within their rights to delete/lock it. Given that the thread was provided specifically to talk about the 3DHubs change after complaints of threads being deleted, it’d be kinda silly to get it restricted because of your own actions.
Personally, if you are thinking of building your own Hub, then this thread would be a useful place to talk about/consider why 3DHubs are making these changes. Putting aside accusations, it’s entirely possible that what 3DHubs have learned from trying to operate as a local/small Hub provision service could be very important learning if you’re thinking of starting down that route.
I wonder what would happen if a friend made several orders to you this month that you responded instantly and filled them. That could get you to the qualifying scores.
I am convinced there are Hubs that did just this thing in the past to get their numbers up with easy prints and low balled rates. Just saying this IMHO. I think the response time grade was silly. Some small businesses and even large ones do not respond to orders at night and on weekends.
I just think it is a strange and unfair way to close a service for people that have a 26min response time and let hubs with a 25min response time the possibility to continue the hub. For the customer it is no difference and a hub with a slightly longer response time might be much more popular and successful than a hub with a short response time
Totally agree. Their metrics made no sense to me. I was annoyed by the poor communications from the company.
I thought they were already pretty greedy with the fee structure. 1.7 million parts in 5 years doesn’t seem like much to me.
And you were an ambassador and they still cut you out?
My guess is they have the Netfabb engine integrated into their system.
To be fair, if you manage when your hub is online, 25 minutes is a really easy target. Mine is currently 6 minutes & I think the worst it’s been is 11 minutes
Just turn your hub of when you know you can’t respond. Ok, you might miss some potential orders, but if you’re not able to respond, you’re eating into your production time as well.
I’ve actually had quite a few “urgent” orders where the customer has said response time was a factor in their choice of hub.
Make no mistake this was by force not intention and the title is vague enough to get buried in a sea of other posts in no time. Great job whoever is back there handling the fallout, should get a raise for sure there will be plenty of cash floating around from the new model lol.
I agree. I understand the point in responding in a timely manor but I think this is one that shouldn’t be such a hard fast rule.
I have no delusions that this was created as anything more than a purgatory to contain all discussion on this topic. That being said, the support team could have continued closing and un-listing threads, but they have allowed us an opportunity to continue using their forums. I would hope the community can use this as a chance to rationally discuss the changes being made and their effects.
@Odense3DPrint, thank you for setting this up! My hope is to keep this thread more centered on the 3DHubs platform and the upcoming changes, but would certainly love to continue the discussion on viable outside alternatives.
Half of my stuff has come in between 11 PM and 3 AM. All of my orders have been local pick up so if I turn off the hub at night I am forcing local people to potentially have to pay for shipping with a hub they don’t want to use in the first place.
I think being forced to choose to miss jobs simply because a customer wants to place an order in the middle of the night rather than respond during reasonable hours is ridiculous.
That is not a good service model.
How many on line businesses tell you “orders after XXX time will be processed tomorrow”?
It is not unreasonable to respond to over night/off hours orders in a timely fashion the next day.
