What do you charge for machine time / your labor?

[msmollin]

I really appreciate everyone's input. This has given me a lot to think about. The first thing I've done is tell all my friends/family who don't wanna pay anything that paying customers come first, so they go to the back of the line. That has started them asking "well... how much do you charge?" So that's been a good starter. As for what to charge, the answers here have given me much to think about.

This forum as always continues to impress me.

[willnewton]

willnewton wrote:

There are only two prices in my shop- full price or free. I have varying shop rates ranging from $40 to $60 to $100 hour depending on what manpower, tools, and skills are required to finish the job.

Who can only avail the free prices, and what about for the full price?
Is there any requirements to avail for?

You are WAY overthinking this to assume there is a list of official requirements to meet.

Family, a good friend, or organization whose work I support and receives no commercial benefit and is done at little to no cost AND effort from me. Just use common sense. Anything that I would do for fun and free, it is very easy to figure out who gets things free.

Example #1. My daughter wants 3d printed pencil box- free. My buddy that flies quadcopters needs a frame to match the one I have-free. My homebrewing club that I am a founding member of needed an award for a contest, so I printed a mug-free.

Example#2. I have never met you, but if your daughter wants 3d printed pencil box- full price. Your buddy that flies quadcopters needs a frame to match the one I have-full price. Your homebrewing club that you are a founding member of needed an award for a contest, so I printed a mug-full price.

[willnewton]

I also tell customers that ask for a discount, if they would mind having their paycheck cut 20%, or if it would be too much trouble for them to negotiate a discount for me on groceries, so I can make up for the loss.

You must understand that customers that ask for discounts are trouble. You give them one and they will ALWAYS ask for one.

In a similar train of thought, someone posted earlier that they lost jobs after charging a certain rate. That is a terrible way to think. You need to sharpen your presentation, so that people will be surprised at how affordable your rate is. Let the bargain hunters go shop somewhere else, they will be putting you out of business quickly.

Educate your clients about your business, help them understand why the service you provide is a bargain at twice the price. Don't undersell yourself!

You often find the only one that resists a price increase is YOU!

[insta]

I also tell customers that ask for a discount, if they would mind having their paycheck cut 20%, or if it would be too much trouble for them to negotiate a discount for me on groceries, so I can make up for the loss.

You must understand that customers that ask for discounts are trouble. You give them one and they will ALWAYS ask for one.

In a similar train of thought, someone posted earlier that they lost jobs after charging a certain rate. That is a terrible way to think. You need to sharpen your presentation, so that people will be surprised at how affordable your rate is. Let the bargain hunters go shop somewhere else, they will be putting you out of business quickly.

Educate your clients about your business, help them understand why the service you provide is a bargain at twice the price. Don't undersell yourself!

You often find the only one that resists a price increase is YOU!

I'm that guy, and in my case it's because I'm offering bids solely on the makexyz/3dhubs sites. I'm top of the list in my area on one of them, and get a lot of traffic. It's pretty easy for people to scroll to the next person down (who also has a 5 star rating) when my price is too high. These jobs approximately pay for my printers and materials. When I grab a corporate customer off those sites I generally bogart them and start setting different (and more advantageous) pricing, and make up for it with consistency and reliability. The problem I'm trying to avoid is not getting those customers in the first place because somebody undercuts me 5 cents per CC and ends up #1 on the list instead.

It's a tough act to balance, good pricing without a race to the bottom. It's a line I'm trying to walk very carefully. I really wish I knew more about what I was doing

[dklassen]

The key to 3D Hubs is make it look more professional than the others in your area. Nice banner, profile pic of yourself and most of all a portfolio of high quality parts other than an Owl or Frog from Thingiverse. Not saying you can't use Thingiverse models, just choose wisely. I have 5 pages of samples on mine. The other thing I did was setup my own site using WordPress. Google and other search engines love to gobble up Wordpress pages. If you do it right you can get very high search rankings in your area very quickly.

I've had a few jobs from from 3D Hubs but most of my work comes from my own site. I do zero advertising. I also get quite a few requests for 3D design to go along with printing. Given I'm only a beginner at that, I partnered with a local gentleman who's a product designer by trade. I can contract off the design jobs to him and handle the printing work myself.

First and foremost! Great quality prints, fast and personal service... and don't expect to get rich.

[insta]

Yep, that level of operation is the plan for this year, now that I have my LLC...

[sprior]

I just made a "time for time" deal to print something for a massage therapist - I think everyone comes out happy in this deal.

[hybridprinter]

Sprior.. Haha great deal!

Insta, just make your 3dhub corporate focused.. Call it something with business to business in the name. I think that site is a race to the bottom, let others play that game, if you want to build a business focus on business clients and repeat orders. Working with machine shops its always the ones with repeatable customers who grow, the guys that have to take jobs from anybody get stuck always looking for work and doing it at rock bottom pricing. Often you can find shops will give you rock bottom prices on the first job, but thats unsustainable.
If I offered contract printing services I wouldn't even do non-business work, spend the free time instead honing the printer for unique abilities that a business needs. If you stay making pla/abs simple models it will be lower pricing power each month as more hubs pop up with the same capabilities.
Case in point.. Im surprised how few people are trying multi-material printing.. Look at those half million dollar connex machines.. They are selling great for a reason.. Multi-material.. It opens up so many new product possibilities.

Out of curiosity, how many business clients do you get on those hub sites?

[sprior]

This is the going rate for a 90 minute Swedish massage, a custom designed (in AutoDesk Fusion 360) "Reset button" button/keyfob printed in ABS. I've actually already put more than 90 minutes into this just on the design side, making the domed top and trimming the text to follow the domed shape was a good learning experience, then updating it from 32 to 38mm in diameter was more of a redo than I expected. The first material choice was blue translucent PETG, but as you can see the translucent made it difficult to read the lettering so the second try was opaque blue ABS, I'm on the fence about whether the original 1 1/4" or the new 1 1/2" is better. I printed both with a 0.1mm layer height to get the best domed top possible. I printed the translucent one at 100% infill because I thought that would look better than having a looser infill pattern show. I thought that ABS, PETG, or Bridge Nylon would be a better choice for this project than PLA because this thing could easily end up in a hot car and will likely see a fair amount of abuse on a keychain.

I'm still happy with the deal, but the business moral of the story is that it will take a lot longer for simple things than you think it will, allow for that.

[jimc]

man thats quite the deal right there. those are about a 10 min modeling job in rhino. i know some software certain things are harder than others but in any case, fusion or rhino or whatever...still seems like a good deal to me.