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  1. #1
    Student
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    Nashville, TN
    Posts
    4

    Cost and Charging Advice

    Hey Guys,

    This probably has been beat into the ground but I really need some advice. I'm a hobbyist, and didn't really get my printer to start a business. I have a FlashForge Creator Pro, about $900. Anyways. I've printed a few kichy items here and there for people I know and now people want to pay me to print stuff for them. But I'm still a little confused on best practice.

    So I'm currently printing a couple engineered parts for an assembly. I'm printing with PLA as prototypes only, my friend would eventually like some more durable materials and I recommended SLA for the final part. Anyways here's the breakdown of the job.

    Pie Cut Print Job: 2 Jobs (printed the thing twice)

    1. Time: 6 hours (2 individual parts on the bed)

    2. Filament Used: 1100 mm (11 m of filament out of the roll)

    3. Cost of the Roll: $30.00 -------------> $2.17 for filament used

    Total for Both: $47.17

    So based on calculators it says the filament cost for filament is about $2.17 for both jobs. However that's 12 hours on the printer. I've read that a base Printer Tech fee is $15 per hour which would be a ton of money for 12 hours of print time. I figured I would only charge him 3 hours worth of work at the $15 rate and count the time I messed around in the slicer and cleaning up the first batch with sanding/filing. Hence the total I came to was the $47.17

    Is this a reasonable rate? He said he was quoted about $120 at an online service.. Remember what I said earlier about not wanting to start a business. I'm just looking for some more professional advice on what to charge in case I do start doing this more frequently. I'm a newbie to this so I'm just looking for advice on best practice.

    Thanks,

    T.
    Last edited by Rkitekt01; 01-07-2019 at 08:01 PM. Reason: typo on material used

  2. #2
    Super Moderator curious aardvark's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2014
    Posts
    8,818
    first - always round up, just saves time.
    so $50.

    second, the easiast thing to use to calculate a standard fee is the build volume.
    Unless you are using a special - expensive - filament then a standard cost per cm3 is the simplest way to go.

    So if you're happy with $50 for what you've printed - work out the volume of the parts and divide $50 by the number of cubic centimetres. That's your base charge.

    Volume works as it incorporates both time taken to print and filament amount used.

    And count yourself lucky you've got someone willing to pay for something :-)

  3. #3
    Student
    Join Date
    Sep 2018
    Location
    Nashville, TN
    Posts
    4
    Ah that makes sense. So it's ok to just use basic box dimensions?

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