So I’m 3d printing my (quite novel and impressive) invention for profit, but I’m not sure what price I should ask. I don’t want to make it too expensive, on the other hand I’ve invested a lot (in $ it would already be a 5 digit number) and need at least a small payout.
How much should I at least demand for such a print job of 10 hours and 150g PLA? I’d very much appreciate your advice, thanks:)
http://gbeam.de/en/228/cree-t6-flashlight-collection-of-camera-lenses-win
Depends what your time is worth. Really, I’d print the master, and resin cast for production…
Consider injection molding. 3D printing is great for prototyping but way too slow for larger production runs.
Setup for injection is tens of thousands. You can make rubber molds and resin for a few hundred.
Thanks, but while casting and injection molding would be possible (with some major changes and investments) it is not really my goal.
The idea is focused around decentralized production with FDM, meaning primarily digital distribution and people printing it on their own printers.
So let me reformulate the question: If you had the template and could print it: How much would you ask for that?
@Christian_Werner no more than twenty five USD. I really want to get my hands on these files and print it so the sooner the better.
@Daniel_Joyce , setup for injection mold is certainly not tens of thousands. DeltaMaker now has injection molded corner brackets and it certainly didn’t cost that much. Maybe a couple thousand, but not an entire order of magnitude more than that.
Still more expensive than resin casting
This is the company we used: http://www.protolabs.com/protomold
You can build an injection molding machine. It’s basically a big caulk gun with a heater… Or you could get one of these: http://www.techkits.com