Advice on farming out my 3D printer for jobs

GarageBay9

Times are super tight and my wife reminded me I have this monster just sitting idle in our side room right now when it could be printing stuff for people. However... I've never commissioned or ordered a 3D print, much less sold one, so I'm not sure where to find clients for that kind of thing or what the average market price is for prints.

I've seen 3D printing threads here before with a few people getting into the print-selling business, and I know some artists around here have had their sculpts printed, so I thought I'd tap into the hivemind and see if anybody had some advice.

Machine is a basically bone-stock Rostock Max, a delta format printer with a 280mm x 360mm(-ish) tall cylindrical build volume, and a e3d all-metal hotend that can go north of 300 deg centigrade. Build surface can go to 95 c. Capable of ABS, PLA, possibly nylon (would need to run some quick tests), and other 1.75mm filaments.

Where do people who want to order prints look for that kind of thing, and what are prices normally like? Are they print-time based, or material volume based, both...?

(Ignore the dinosaur laptop next to it, I just needed something to flash the Arduino firmware)

Lamont

This is what I look for when I need prints, maybe it will help:

• What the device capabilities are in clear Engrish/Easy to understand terms. No "guestimations".
• Communications through the process. How you accept the data. Memory limitations. Depending on the device there is a max vert limit. Know this stuff and set a FAQ.
• Shipping has to be spot on.
• Post high quality photos of the output. If you do not have models to show off the quality of the print and capabilities of the printer, ask around, get permission and print those.
• If you do not have a high quality camera, find someone who does and do really nice turn-tables of them from multiple angles. Get in and show what the finish looks like.
• Machines like the one you posted I use for rough drafts to send to people, then I get finals done somewhere else.
• As for price, I do not know. Hopefully someone will chime in.

Pabs

any examples to see what kind of quality we can expect?

GarageBay9

scapulator wrote: »

any examples to see what kind of quality we can expect?

The only large pieces I have lying around are on the ugly side because I was making a mechanical prototype and I was more concerned with speed and conserving filament. (I was making a prototype for a flight sim throttle quadrant... didn't have to be pretty, just had to work.)

I can print some sample models off here in a few days. I'll need to track down (or just make) some good sculpts that would show it off well. Slow it down and run the layers down to .05mm or so, and it can do some beautiful stuff.

ZacD

Also figure out the exact cost of how much it costs you to do an hour of printing, in terms of electricity, material, and how much time of yours it takes to set up, and how much your time is worth. Obviously you can offer a bulk discount because it will require less of your time to set up each print.

You could post ads on craigslist and similar sites offering the service. Shipping can be expensive, dealing locally can save you and a customer a lot of money.

AlecMoody

I have parts printed through a website called MakeXYZ. You can list your machine there and people will contact you about printing jobs. Most home FDM printers on MakeXYZ (at least in my area) are charging 0.25 per cm3 for PLA or ABS. Nylon a little more.

Also,
I have a large ABS part I am looking to get printed. My regular guy is building a larger printer to accommodate it but it looks like yours might already be big enough. It could definitely do it in 2 prints.

GarageBay9

AlecMoody wrote: »

I have parts printed through a website called MakeXYZ. You can list your machine there and people will contact you about printing jobs. Most home FDM printers on MakeXYZ (at least in my area) are charging 0.25 per cm3 for PLA or ABS. Nylon a little more.

Also,
I have a large ABS part I am looking to get printed. My regular guy is building a larger printer to accommodate it but it looks like yours might already be big enough. It could definitely do it in 2 prints.

Thanks for the tip, Alec! I just registered over there, looks exactly like what I was looking for.

If what you're making can fit in a 280mm wide by 360mm tall cylinder, there aren't serious overhangs that would need secondary support material, and you don't have any specific issues with load bearing or material isotropy orientation (the 'grain' of the layers), this thing can do it without breaking a sweat.

AlecMoody

This is what the part looks like inside the bounding area- It barely fits. It has a lot of overhangs but my regular printer has had very good luck with meshmixer 2.0 supports:

http://gyazo.com/e77646a12c54be9da7078cdbdddd0e3d

He has been printing this in 4 pieces on a solidoodle2 with an enclosed printing chamber. Open air on the rostock max might make printing this part in ABS very difficult.

GarageBay9

That actually doesn't look so bad. Depending on what Slic3r spits out with autogenerated supports, we may need to hand-build some lattices, but if we run it slow and keep the layers thin I think it'll turn out nice. The only real big challenges are the spots where the pipe is horizontal, and since they have a circular cross section I think we can get it to work.