Why on earth is printing via Shapeways so expensive??

I'm trying to produce a product, and I want to get a prototype printed. I thought that shapeways would be a great way to do this. However, when I upload my product, its a shocking $39! I have a 3D printer and would print it myself if I wasn't limited to a 100cm3 build volume. This part isn't that large at all, and its very simple.

Hello,
How big is not large? Shapeways base their prices on a handling fee per item and amount of material used, which is different for each material.

Is it an object that could be hollowed if not already?

Is there a product out there already which you can buy off the shelf that does the same thing? I ask because whenever I've made/bought a model with Shapeways it's always been because there isn't one to buy off the shelf anywhere else, the model is unique and modelled to my specifications, that's partly what I buy into.

$39 doesn't sound a lot compared to what some people have questioned about, but I suppose it all depends on how much you can afford and want the item, like can you justify spending that much on that product?

Also if you get quotes on Rapid Prototyping websites you may see that they're prices are a lot more expensive.

Tom.

How much would it cost to print on your printer if it would fit in your build volume? Then scale it up - 2 times bigger equals 8 times more volume and eight times more expensive (purely on materials, not counting energy costs). Plus, if you do it yourself you are ignoring any associated labour costs. Plus, SW is a business and I imagine they are trying to make a profit.

There is also a significant quality difference between most home printers and the industrial machines that Shapeways uses. You'll get smoother surfaces and several material options not available to the home printers.

3d printing is not (yet) capable of achieving the low per-unit costs of injection molding, but injection molding has very high setup costs for making the molds. On the other hand, 3d printing can produce geometries that are impossible with injection molding.

Every other printshop that I contacted to produce my designs.. wanted TEN TIMES what Shapeways was asking!

As was said above.. you can reduce the cost if you make your object hollow.

I calculated it, and to print it on my printer (if I had sufficient build volume) it would be $0.09 per part. I understand the process Shapeways uses is of higher quality, and perhaps costs more, but if you look at it, it seems a bit ridiculous. The part is a calculator case, its a rectangular prism with a bottom and 3 sides, no way to hollow it, and I've made it as thin as it can be.

What doesn't make sense to me is that printing costs varies linearly on cubic cm. But with an increase in size, the only thing that is increasing is amount of material used, all other costs stay constant. If I'm printing a 1cm3 cube vs a 10cm3 cube, why should the later cost 10x more? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a base handling price, plus a material used price?

They do use the base handling price plus material used price (plus shipping fees).

For example for strong and flexible materials:

Handling Fee Per Model: White: $1.50, Black $1.75, Polished: $2.00, Dyed: $2.25
Price Per cm3: White: $1.40, Black: $1.75, Polished: $1.50, Dyed: $1.50

I don't know if $39 is in the ball park for what you are attempting to make in any particular material. How does the price compare to equivalent items other people are selling? Have you checked if the correct units are being used when you upload your model? Perhaps it is larger than you are expecting.

One more thought. A rough calculation indicates that your model is around 20 cm^3. There is a strong and flexible 50% discount for material in a model that exceeds 20cm^3 as long as the overall model density is greater than 10%. If you put two or more parts in a file you could conceivably get the extra parts at roughly a 50% discount while sharing the model set-up and handling fees between all the individual parts in the model.

Generally speaking, larger parts cost more due mostly to the longer build time, not so much the cost of materials. Depending on the style printer, -Z-axis is usually the biggest factor in build time. So a 10cm cube vs. a 1cm cube will take a lot longer to print and will definitely cost considerably more.

About the handling prices, I've seen those, but they're quite low for handling, and material certainly doesn't cost $1.70+ for plastic.

Other cases that are stock are about $10 on market, meaning in reality whoever is making them probably pays less than $2 for manufacturing. Which is understandable since they probably use injection molding. I'm not trying to compete with those guys, the idea of my case is that its customizable, so if I could get manufacturing down to at least $15, I could produce it.

I'll look into that 50% discount, thanks!

I hadn't thought about that, that makes sense. Still, $2+ for a cubic cm still seems a bit sharp.

What I meant is how does the price of your case compare with roughly equivalent cases on Shapeways or other 3D printing services? If I'm correct about the 20 cm^3 volume calculation that's a lot of plastic to print.

Also when you talk about making a prototype does that mean you hope to move to alternate manufacturing in the future? Because if you do why the big worry about the 3D printing costs here?

No I would plan to keep it in the shapeways shop. I don't think there would be enough demand that mass manufacturing would be benefitial. Its more a project for me really.

Answer, because they can.

When Shapeways first came into being the initial idea was to use industrial level 3D printing machines to make consumer products designed by the masses. Great idea! One problem though, companies that had already been offering 3D printing services for rapid prototyping. These companies were charging OUTRAGEOUS PRICES for these specialized services. So, along comes Shapeways. You cannot sell an ordinary $25 USD consumer product made out of plastic for $1500 USD so Shapeways had to offer these same services at greatly reduced costs in order to sell products to consumers. These original rapid prototyping companies HATE Shapeways for this! HAHAHA!

However, Shapeways didn't go all the way down to the consumer price level for consumer products, they are still WAYYYY out of range on most of their materials. It cost Shapeways practically nothing to make these 3D printed items since they are printing on such a large scale. For most materials they don't even require you to ship a print back to them if there is a problem, they just tell you to keep the defective print and send you a new one. Yet, their prices are still very high because a huge part of their business comes from selling 3D printing services to those seeking rapid prototyping services. That's one of the problems with Shapeways. They try to do both. They try to sell their services to those seeking rapid prototyping while at the same time trying to sell 3D printed products to consumers. This is why you'll see people like myself saying, "Divide Shapeways into two branches!" One that sells consumer products and one that sells rapid prototyping services!

As for what's up with your product design, how about posting it as an attachment or make it downloadable in your shop or at least post pictures so we can see what's up with it and then perhaps we can give suggestions that will get the cost down.

James, really...
if it were possible to undercut shapeways AND stay in business, somebody would probably be doing it already. Capital costs for all the nice printers,
rent, wages,... - even if it is spread over tens of thousands of parts it does not reduce to zero. (And shapeways' throughput is probably still way below
that of any "conventional" manufacturer of similar size). The original "rapid prototyping" firms were (and are) even more expensive because their market is smaller and more demanding. IMHO it was (and probably still is) a huge gamble to provide such services to "the general public" (an unknown fraction of which might be interested in the offering at all) - streamlined to keep the cost low and yet maintain sufficient quality despite all the shortcomings of current 3d printing technology. If it were all so easy, we would not be having the ongoing discussions about minimum wall thicknesses, surface quality, "unfair" rejections...

For the OP, another factor in the perceived expensiveness could be the difference between the standard ABS and PLA filaments used in typical home printers and the rather special type of nylon powder used for shapeways' strong and flexible. (Some months back there were even serious concerns about continued availability of the raw material after a major explosion at a chemicals plant in Germany that provides a huge share of world production of one of the two precursor compounds)

Bear in mind that $2 IMP item probably cost the seller over $10 grand in tooling before they shipped a single one! (And the actual plastic cost per item is more like $.02, the rest of the $2 is labour, packaging, shipping etc...)

While I'd love lower prices, I understand that SW needs to pay the rent, salaries, maintenance, supplies etc, and still turn a profit. And since the "wear & tear" on the machines is a direct function of print volume, I cannot see how there can be much discount for increased size. Unless the machinery gets a LOT cheaper, and the set-up processes get a LOT more automated (to reduce staff costs), I cannot see 3D rapid-prototyping getting much cheaper in the near future. But it's still way cheaper than that $10k in tooling!

+1
Also judging from the investment funding they've been getting, its highly unlikely they're even profitable yet.

This entire discussion has ignored the cost of the process itself.

A batch of WSF is basically an 18" cube, and it takes 24 hours to print. The way the process works, the entire volume must be heated to a degree or two below the melting point of the nylon. The laser only adds 2-3 degrees of heat to the process - it's not heating it up from room temperature (as done with a home printer). That means a significant electrical cost for keeping the entire container hot for 24 hours.

It's wrong to assume that just because the plastic material itself is inexpensive, that the process to produce magical things is also inexpensive.

The magic of 3dPrinting is not the ability to crank out 10,000 of a single item cheaply.. the magic is producing 10,000 uniquely customized items or to produce something that is geometrically impossible to print via any other method.

In my humble opinion Shapeways has paid for all of their equipment years ago. Monthly operating costs are most likely covered within the first few days of the month, given the volume at which Shapeways operates and the rest of the month is pure profit.

As for the 30 million USD in investment that came in a few months ago, that would have been for expansion. Shapeways didn't need that investment as they could have done it on their own I'll bet, but it would have taken them a few years longer.

Polyamide powder is costly? Really? It's plastic!

As for electricity costs, industry pays for their electricity at bulk rates, the cost for electricity is insignificant.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Shapeways is barely scratching by. Maybe they haven't even turned a profit yet!

Or maybe I'm right. Here's my prediction. Shapeways will continue to charge these very high prices until the revenue from the rapid prototyping crowd dries up. This will happen when the prices for printers plummet in the next few years and everyone pertinent gets their own printers. At that time Shapeways will then make moves to manufacture products at costs low enough to readily sell to consumers.

Wrt the OP: we don't have any solid info on the model (volume, geometry, whether it has been amended by MeshMedic on upload) so any meaningful discussion is almost impossible. I would be very surprised if the cost estimate of 9 cents is accurate, even if it just includes materials and excludes all the major overheads that SW has.

Wrt UniverseBecoming:

The powder is not just plastic, but plastic powder of certain specifications: if the powder is too fine it will blow around and be very difficult to handle, iff the grains are too large the printer cannot use it as it will mess up the layers. And plastic has increased in cost over the years along with the cost of the materials used to create it.

The electricity costs are lower to SW than consumers, but they use a lot (for heating and cooling) so the overall costs may not be ignored.

Manpower is not free, nor rent, and SW have a whole bunch of staff in all sorts of positions.

Imo the quality of SW's output (when it works correctly!!!) is so much better than a home printer there is no comparison.

SW are still cheaper than any of their competitors (afaik), so they will probably be the last to drop their prices further.

Would I like 3D printing to be cheaper? Sure. Are SW too expensive? In comparison to their competitors, no.

Shapeways also has the facility in New York, so multiply all costs of doing business there by a factor of 2 or 3 over being in places like Texas or Indiana!