Cost Structure of a 3-D Printer

Hi All,

I'm curious to understand what the cost structure of a typical 3-D printer looks like. Has anybody seen some research which indicates which components are the most expensive for different types of printers... so for example, some printers have lasers vs electron beams while others use heated filament technology... but almost everybody has motors and controllers. is there some research which indicates how the cost structure for these different component adds up and what eventually the profit margins look like?

Would be great if somebody has such a breakdown. can you please share?

regards,

alright so...you've basically asked 20 questions in 1 paragraph ;)

so right now, 3d technology is sort of revolved around what materials can be printed,

for the materials that can be melted with relative low temperatures like thermoplastics, metal powders mixed with pastic aka faux metal like bronze fill, uh some edible materials, biodegradables, clays, etc etc. these more mallable materials are mainly printed with 'Fused deposition modelling" so the printer head extrudes and heats the material into a liquid form and deposits the material layer by layer onto the print bed.

since this is relative easy to achieve (low heat requirements), it is the cheapest and mostly available, and costs anywhere from 500$ to 2000$+

this is best used for making things without a concern for how high the resolution has to be. the models will come out with visible lines from the layers of printed, so the resolutions are medium, but does the job in terms of structurally, like if you want to replace parts of every day items you have, or to test concept ideas.

next at the high end spectrum where quality is most important and when you want to use materials like metals, you need a way to achieve higher temperatures as well as control the deposition of metals,

there are several methods to do this such as

-Laser Sintering/Melting (a laser melts target area of metal powder to bind the power into a solid piece of metal) there are a number of variations to this technology)

these machines cost anywhere from 500k+ an Shapeways started with 10 of these...probably have more now


-electron beam melting, (aka super high end version of lasers) (instead of a laser, it is an electron beam, the power source being a electron beam requires a vacuum, but the benefit of this over laser melting is that it can melt and weld metals that are extraordinarily resistant of heat and wear aka refractory metals as well as different types of metals at once achieving deeper weld penetration and contamination free. materials such as titanium, and super-alloys require this level of power and accuracy to build fully dense, void-free, ready to use parts.
(this can be used on metal powders, or melting a metal wire to create the part)
(this is used in space by nasa as a tool to makes parts where there's no gravity, and where there's no waste of materials.)

these machines cost idk... millions due to the electron beam equipments

now for some materials, like photo polymers, or photo sensitive plastics, where the material hardens when exposed to uv light, a uv laser can point at a vat of curable photoploymer "resin" and hardens target area, building up parts.

these machines cost anywhere from 100k to 500k+

there's also a process where, think of an object being printed with tape, you layer by layer tape on top of eachother until the object appears from all those layers

this process is called 'laminated object manufacturing' and its not very popular, but can be use with materials like plastic films, foils, paper, flat stuff, there's a bit of waste tho, because the shape of the layered material comes from a roll of that material, so its truly an 'additive' process although you do add materials to make your parts.

cost is probably in the thousands due to low cost materials

now an older technology only used plaster powder as its material, where a regular inkjet print head would deposit a liquid binding material to 'glue' the powder into a solid layer, as well as color.

so you end with up a fully colored part made of gypsum based plaster, and these machines used to be the 'cheaper' ones available before extrusion with plastic... which is popularized due to expiration of certain patents... and on the subject of patents, the laser sintering patents were expired earlier this year so expect those 500k high end machines to come down in price dramatically over the next few years.

sry if this ended up being a sort of a history lesson, feel free to do your own research starting at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing

now to answer your question about how much parts cost, motors, treads, arduinos, look those parts are cheap, hundreds max, depends on how big, accuracy of the print, stability of the frame, etc etc, better quality, stronger box, more $$, the expensive parts are probably the printer head, because that's the sophisticated part where if you want quality you gotta pay, all the other parts you can make with pluming parts, and most of the codes and software are opensourced, otherwise you might have to pay a premium for all in one packaged software which is not the best idea since they were designed for a specific system where they sell with the printer so... look its cheap enough these to buy an dual extrusion head for abs/pla/other regular plastics, for 300-500$ don't bother making one yourself, unless you want a nice education on how to build a 3d printer from teh ground up

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Originally Posted by kkr2239

Hi All,

I'm curious to understand what the cost structure of a typical 3-D printer looks like. Has anybody seen some research which indicates which components are the most expensive for different types of printers... so for example, some printers have lasers vs electron beams while others use heated filament technology... but almost everybody has motors and controllers. is there some research which indicates how the cost structure for these different component adds up and what eventually the profit margins look like?

Would be great if somebody has such a breakdown. can you please share?

regards,

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Look for an open source printer such as Prusa or Mendel for FDM or the planB for SLS, find the BOM and look the prices up on the internet. You'll get a good idea of the price structure.