Printable View
This is probably a stupid question that makes me sound a bit stupid myself. However, I am a newbie that is looking to get into 3D printing. I was wondering a few things:
1) What does that average printed item cost you (in terms of filament)
2) How many average sized items can you print with $100 in filament.
I am referring to PLA or ABS filament.
Well the shop i buy from is dealing with fillement with the cost of about 20 euro de Kilo, So 5 kilo of fillement with 100 euros.
(Well the shop i buy from, is kinda cheap, but most fillement is in America cheaper so it will be aprox the same)
All i will say is, You will have to print 24/7 for more then a month to get it all (printed)
When i had some vacation for aprox 3 weeks i almost printed every day,
After 7 weeks of printing aprox every day its now almost all gone (2 kilos of PLA)
I don't know your behavior as printing goes, so i have to estimate roughly you will be good for like 4 months of printing.
If you pay $40/Kg you would only get 2-3 Kg.
I have started a spreadsheet that I put all my printed models into. for future reference.
when I get back to work I will upload a copy.
it list's - part description / part file name(when it is scaled up or down) / filament colour / time to print / part weight with support / part weight support removed / part cost.
Attachment 56
as an exmple the helicoptor shown. the main body is 160 mm long and weighs approx 58 grams, and cost about AU$8.00 and 4 hours to print on a MakerBot 2X.
using this speadsheet i can see that sometimes the same 3D print takes longer / shorter time to print.
hope that helps.
regards Robert
Well it depends a lot from the fact where you purchase your filament. Larger quantities of cheap filament won't necessarily produce more parts than lower quantity of pricy filament. I had a lot of terrible experience with cheap supplies, they can have as low as 50% efficiency in producing good prints, on the other hand when printing with high quality filament you will get 95% efficiency or even more. Not to mention cheaper filament can steal you a lot of time with fixing extruder / hot end.
I use 2 suppliers, one is from UK and they produce the best filament in my opinion but they are also pretty expensive so I only use it for highest grade prints. Another is from the Netherlands, their quality is pretty fair and they are cheap (around 20€/kg + shipping).
- Filip