Orionblamblam said:
Are these 3D prints going to be one-offs? Or are you going to turn them into kits that people can buy?
If the latter, you're better off making one print, doing a lot of cleanup to the parts, then having the parts cast in resin. For more than a dozen or so kits, that's cheaper... and the quality is also a lot better. As great as 3D printing is to make master parts, it's still not yet to where you can sell *quality* kits straight from the printer. Even the best printers have regrettable surface finishes.
I would disagree with that surface finish comment. The high end industrial models (price tag starting around 100 000€ or 135 000 USD) produce parts comparable to injection molding (I know that there are not all injection molding products are same quality). We are not talking about printers costing few thousands. But we shall see when the printing starts
The model kits will be a side project for my 3D-printing business in order to keep expensive machinery utilization rate as high as possible. My profits on this will be less than on printing for hire business, but smaller profit is better than no profit at all when machinery is idle. In printing for hire the most of the price comes from the cost of the printer, not from the material costs.
Short calculation: the loan has to be paid in 4 years, there are 12 months in each and each month has 4 weeks with 5 working days and each day has 8 business hours, so the machine has around 8000 hours to make at minimum 100 000€ in order to pay back the loan. So at minimum and full business hour usage (unrealistic) 12.5€/hour +depreciation+material+interest+rent+electricity+salaries+profit. With everything else, except material, factored in with realistic usage hours the hourly rate for the machine has to be above 100€. And printing is slow process... (So slow, that most of printer manufactures don't usually quote the speed of their machines in their public material.) In this side project I can do it lot cheaper as long as it doesn't hurt my main business.
In the case of resin, the material costs of printing are higher (I'd estimate it to be around order of magnitude on small business scale purchases), but amount of labor is lot less. In printing I can just push the button on printer at evening when I'm leaving and the printer prints the parts during night and on morning I collect them and put them in the washer and then some time later move them to drier.
Tuomo
