What do you charge for machine time / your labor?

[insta]

Someone asked me to make 7 parts. I uploaded to Shapeways, and it said $79.

I then came up with a formula to be about half that.

Material cost marked up 4x.

$8 per hour machine time.

Came to $39 per part.

I just can't see tying up my printer for 4 hours and not getting at least $40.

Not to mention electricity and wear and tear.

I have not told him the price yet. I will see what happens.

I understand the race to the bottom of MakeXYZ though. I just can't see trying to compete with kids in dorm rooms and men who still live in their mom's basement. It is unsustainable to make parts for a few dollars each.

Can you share the part? I'm curious what my pricing would work out to. Also, let me know if he goes for that, I need to raise my prices.

[rsilvers]

Simplify says 3 hours 10 minutes to print with 50% infill. 108 grams of plastic.
Material cost $2.82 ($26 per KG).

This is 4800 mm/min and 0.25mm layers (he said that it does not need to be very high res).

Not positive he is going for it, but it seems so. I said the price and no one seemed concerned.

I agree that if you are on MakeXYZ you won't get jobs if you cost more than the other people. That is why that site is of no use. Maybe focus on business-to-business with local work and a nice website.

[insta]

Simplify says 3 hours 10 minutes to print with 50% infill. 108 grams of plastic.
Material cost $2.82 ($26 per KG).

This is 4800 mm/min and 0.25mm layers (he said that it does not need to be very high res).

Not positive he is going for it, but it seems so. I said the price and no one seemed concerned.

I agree that if you are on MakeXYZ you won't get jobs if you cost more than the other people. That is why that site is of no use. Maybe focus on business-to-business with local work and a nice website.

That is my focus, I'm slowly building it that way. With little exception, I do not lower my pricing on MakeXYZ from a bid.

There is a guy courting me on there now that I think I'm going to stick with my "setup fee" only for, just because the part is super-simple and he doesn't seem to care about material or quality, and will pick it up from me ... but that's rare.