3D Print with 3D Hubs has become a thing. People are ordering my designs from Thingiverse, things that I have made from scratch, given away freely and I would just like to know who is profiting and why I wasn’t asked.
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I’m glad to know that’s the case. To me, the entire point of designing things is to prove that 3d printing can be useful and not just flashy. I just wanted to make sure that no one was trying to undermine the altruistic endeavor.
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I don’t get any work from thingivers because my prices are too high but I’ll chime in anyway. We are hired to print stuff. We don’t provide intellectual property, our customers do. This is like taking some papers and making a copy at the print shop. The print shop doesn’t know or care where you got the papers. Their job is to print what you want. You are paying for the use of their copy machine not the intellectually property YOU provide.
If you are mad at people here because someone took your work that you “gave away freely” and hired one of us to print it for them, your anger is severely misplaced. If someone bought a printer so they could print your design, would the manufacturer of the printer also be “making money off your design”?
-Jesse
Brian
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Hey Alexander,
Thanks for posting, I’m happy to share what I know from the 3D Hubs side, I’ll also drop a note to someone at Thingiverse so they can chime in as well.
When the integration with 3D Hubs was launched a couple months ago I believe Thingiverse opted-in designs which had licenses that allowed commercial use, if I’m correct. They also sent out emails notifying their designers about this new integration, recommending designers to setup the ‘tipping feature’, that allows designers to earn either a fixed fee per design, or a ‘pay what you like’ fee.
Lots of designers have set this up and are benefitting from the prints that are being made through 3D Hubs. One thing I would like to point out is that I think this integration is actually a good thing since it makes it easier to get rewarded for your designs than before. Prior to this integration users would simply download your designs and upload them directly on sites like 3D Hubs, now you can easily get paid for each print through Thingiverse.
Hope that provides some insight, and perhaps Thingiverse can also elaborate a bit on how they notified you.
Best,
Brian
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I’m the community manager at Thingiverse (this is me) and I’d like to just double down on what Brian said. We enable 3D Hubs by default only for designers who’s licenses allow for commercial use and we make it easy to disable at any time. We actually set this up to serve people like you. You are generous enough to share your designs for free, and 3D Hubs is a great way to increase the number of people who can use them. With 3D Hubs, your audience is no longer limited to people who own 3D printers. That was the most important idea to us. But we also want to provide a way for designers to make money, so we added the ability for people to tip designers when ordering prints. 100% of the tip goes to the designer, minus the transaction fees from the payment processor.
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Thanks for clearing up the misconception. In that case I salute you. Looking forward to see where this maker movement can take us. Most of my designs are smallish attempts at disrupting the spare parts industry; to free consumers from planned obsolescence.
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Hi Alexander_Gaarn,
How 3D hubs works is that it is basically air B and B for 3D printing as printers are expensive if someone who doesn’t have a printer sees one of your designs they like on Thingiverse or some other site they pay us to print it for them. We chrage for our time and our expertise and the cost of using the machine we are not making money off of your design we are just doing the printing for people who have downloaded your design and want it but don’t have printers.
cheers,
Jacob
Hm As I know nobody sell Your design, only selling their sevices… I think there is no state to be upset or sth… You can always sell Yours models on 3d stocks.
