I think it's great that you open up your service to local businesses.
Unfortunately the major state university in my town is pretty unhelpful and
unfriendly to those not on campus or affiliated with the University in some
way. (I know that there are local businesses that have great relationships
with the University ... but they're all run by graduates of the university.
As an out of towner I'm given short shrift.)
As for anywhere else in town ... I'm not in a major metropolitan area (the
University is the major employer by a long long way). I am a member of
several other lists and I always find it very interesting to note how far
apart the perspective is of people that live in or near greater
metropolitan areas of say 500,000+ compared with the large number of people
that live in "rural cities" of 100,000 or so. At some point the
demographics mean that there is a threshold below which a bunch of "niche"
services and shops disappears (of course in my town the population is about
125K of which over 50K are students ... so that alters the demographics
even more. The nearest "large" city is 2+ hours away.)
It'll be interesting to see what Staples does. I assume it'll be a
centralised thing. I personally wouldn't trust any of the local employees
to run a 3D printer - they do a poor enough job binding books etc as it is.
If it is centralised, I can't see it being any improvement on Shapeways -
with the same problems and benefits. I suppose a local shop could afford to
install the very expensive Stratasys and 3D systems machines, but from what
I have heard (I haven't had any experience myself), they're still pretty
finicky to deal with.
I suppose it all depends on what you're using your printer for too. Just
out of curiosity I weighed the most recent stuff I've printed (last month
or so) - and it comes to about 200 grams, just this month. That's about 166
cubic cm or 10 cubic inches. At $200 for my little things I fear you are
still too expensive for me (compared to the cost of a simple FDM printer) -
but something that might be worthwhile once I've worked out what will and
won't work!
Post by Kenneth SloanLook around. Shapeways is not the only game in town (although it is one that I
recommend, if you need what only they can provide). The alternative is
not always all the way down to âhome printerâ. Staples just announced
a service that looks interesting (but I havenât explored the details).
We provide service to our campus, plus a few local businesses. We print
primarily FDM (our standard setting is âhigh density sparseâ) and charge
$20 per cubic inch. Almost exclusively ABS, and the vast majority of
jobs are printed in vanilla âIvoryâ. For local folk, we often provide 1-3
day
turnaround (depending mostly on the size of the job). [note that the savings
on using a sparse âinfillâ are somewhat offset by the requirement to use
a support material during printing; our customers pay for both the model material
AND the support material - Shapeways only does âsolidâ - but you donât pay
for support.
We print many parts that canNOT be 3D printed (in FDM) without soluble support material]
This is not âcheapâ - but 1-3 days beats USPS by a large margin.
If you had $X to spend on a âhome printerâ, you could do a lot of printing
at $20 per cubic inch for the same $X. And, by then, there may well be
a better printer to buy. Prices are plummeting - only beware of the
âfly by nightâ outfits.
One of my favorite âcost savingâ stories is a fast prototyping project
where
the engineer went through 3 iterations of prototype in ABS before committing
to fabricating the part in aluminum (in a traditional machine shop). The
prototypes were done on 10-hour turnaround for $150 each. The aluminum version
took 3 weeks and cost $1000. Do the math.
http://3DPrintLab.cis.uab.edu
--
Kenneth Sloan
I agree, Shapeways is based on volume of material used, there does not seem
to be the idea of in-fill which FDM printers use. Thus, for example, a model
I print, where I can set in-fill to a low say 25%, it will be mostly air and
use little filament ~$2, but to print on Shapeways was ~$50. Shapeways, etc,
can produce better finishes, but well tuned home printers are getting pretty
good, and turn around is under your control.
I have a printrbot, early version, it is very Reprap, where you need to get
your hands dirty, but they also have pre-built models, and the new metal
printrbot looks pretty good. They have (now) good customer support and
ethics.
I have no experience with others and I'm sure others are good too.
--
http://forum.openscad.org/3D-Printer-tp8049p8101.html
Sent from the OpenSCAD mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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