3D Printing as a business

If there are any out there who are using 3D printing as a business, I'd like to hear more.

I've been talking about the Robo3D with one of our engineers here, and turns out he's interested in me making a vacuform mold for a personal project of his. He also has a pretty decent 3D scanner, that I'd like to swap him time for.

I'd like to know what others are charging, and how those prices were determined. I figure there's material cost, setup time, possibly something for run time... anything else?

 

I got a few "orders" for prints from friends and family. I'm basically just charging for material. Not the model you are looking for tho. All of your parameters sound like what would be used for your internal pricing, but what your are actually going to have to boil it down to of CM3 most likely like the industrial houses do for prototype printing. Flat rate plus sorta thing.

You could figure out your model, and then compare that against the houses pricing models for what it would cost to print with them. Get the STL file, run it through Shapeways and see what THEY would charge, and figure if you can be competitive or not for your time.

 

Thanks for the info, Matt. I will try that... definitely give me a top-end price. Another datum: I found a website makexyz.com, which appears to be for 3D printer owners to market their services. A quick search shows that those listings in my area are pretty consistently charging $0.25/cc. That gives me a low end, and probable starting place.

I'm not really planning to charge him money out of the gate. I'm really just trying to convert my labor & expenses into a common value measurement, so I can negotiate some scanner time. He has an Artec Eva for his automotive parts business... and the mind fairly boggles at the possibilities.