This made me curious about the economics for a 3D printing on demand service. Looks like there are already some players in the space making it work:
Can't wait though until these printers get sub $5000 and it makes sense for every designer to have one next to their desk though. HP is getting into the mix, so prices will surely be driven down. http://develop3d.com/blog/2010/04/the-new-hp-designjet-3d-pr...
We actually offer more processes and materials than anyone else on the web.
I worked at an RP consortium nearly a decade ago and always figured that the LOM they had was a relic. It appears they still have it running (http://www.rpc.msoe.edu/machines_lom.php).
Yeah, those old LOM machines are crazy. The new LOM hotness is coming out of a company called MCor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vow5XvHoFZc
I'm going to be excited to see these machines later this year. Printing with A4 paper means the parts should be so cheap! And they say the consistency is similar to wood...
The cost to make something depends entirely on the exact geometry of the object, the material it's made out of, and various other bits of overhead of the shop that makes it. Sometimes, the orientation of the part in the printer can matter!
Generally, on average, something that an industrial designer would be making would end up costing between $200 and $500.
But again, this is incredibly price sensitive. There's also a trend lately of people making knock-off materials that cost a tenth of the 'real' ones, and some people use those...
I've literally seen orders of magnitude between sellers on the same part. Some people specialize in getting stuff done really quickly, and charge a premium!
Examples of models produced in the various technologies, what they cost and their characteristics and surface finish (photos) would be very helpful.
I think you need to reduce the barrier between having an stl file and knowing the cost of a part with given tolerances, strength and surface finish. Perhaps this means offering at least one higher priced, longer lead time service with a fixed cost per volume of material. Shapeways does this very well.
In any case, yeah. With FabFacts, we were trying to strike an appropriate balance between too much and too little information, which is why we did the summary + full data sheets. If this is a bit too lopsided from one side to another, I'd love some more detailed suggestions, but it's a _really hard_ problem.
> I think you need to reduce the barrier between having an stl file and knowing the cost of a part with given tolerances, strength and surface finish. Perhaps this means offering at least one higher priced, longer lead time service with a fixed cost per volume of material. Shapeways does this very well.
We're currently (mostly) serving the industrial design/engineering market, which is already reasonably knowledgeable about the field, or at least parts of it. It's easier to start with an informed userbase, you know? But decreasing the expertise necessary is certainly in our plans, and where we want to go... but with only two people, you have to prioritize your time. Most of our current customers want _more_ options, not less.
You'd probably be looking at roughly $50-75ish+, if I had to guess.