"Shapeways Pricing" Topic

I have seen some items for sale on Shapeways and I'm wondering how the pricing works? For example, I see some 6mm vehicles, but they want $25 USD for a set of 4!

Now I'm all for the designer getting paid, but I bought a Trojan Bunny in 15mm from that outfit for around $15 USD + shipping. Pricey, but I only need one.

So are designers just pricing high or is Shapeways somehow determining pricing?

More curious than anything…..

Each material that Shapeways uses has a formula for how they calculate pricing. This is generally a flat handling fee plus volume of material used ($ per cubic centimeter) plus volume of machine space used ($ per cubic centimeter). If you're curious this formula is listed on the appropriate materials page.

This is the price that Shapeways charges to print the item. Creators who open a store and make their models public have the option to add a fee on top of this, which goes to the creator (less a small fee),

If that Trojan Bunny was from my shop, Mark, then only a dollar went to me; the rest of the price was material volume and "machine space" charges, as determined by Shapeways' formulas. I used to mark up everything I made by 10% until I realized that it was unfairly penalizing customers who bought the more expensive Detail Plastics (since I would build only one model and then make it available in multiple materials). So now I mark everything in my shop up by a flat dollar.

On those 6mm vehicles costing so much, certain materials -- most notably White, Strong, and Flexible -- charge an additional fee for each separate piece, which can be avoided by connecting the pieces with a sprue. Of course, you can't then use that model to print in Black High-Definition Acrylate, because the Shapeways techs automatically reject anything on sprues for BHDA…

*sigh*

I do everything I can to keep the prices in the affordable range for customers, but it's a moving target sometimes!

This is why I am investigating 3d Hub for my projects…. 3d printers all seem to be hustling hard to find business. That said, if you do sprue up your figs with white and flexible the price gets pretty reasonable.

Oddly, I've had independent hub guys tell me that they specifically do NOT want sprue, because it creates larger file, uses more material, and is just a bother. But I can't hate on Shapeways…. I received some 2mm infantry strips from them today that are unbelievable. And I have a few more iterations in the pipelines, including some on sprue coming in the mail soon.