In short, Because that's the cost it is to have the printed. For example, over 90% of the cost of my models is the simply the cost of the print house to print it. I make somewhere between 50p and a quid per tank, that's all; because I want to keep the price down for you, the potenial customer. (I also base that margin on the cost of the cheapest material and apply that flat cost to all the materials; so the only people who make more money off buying one of my models in the more expensive materials is Shapeways.) If I could sell them for less that that I certainly would like to.
For their part of the price, you'd have to ask Shapeways, and they would, I suspect, tell you that is how much they worked out it costs them to print them. Aside from the all the actual setting up and printing of a printer full of models, even WSF has to be cleaned up (or washed off) and such, and that takes someone's time (and therefore salary.)
_____________________________________________________
I (and I suspect UshCha) would be quite interested in seeing where your $3.50 USD models are coming from. A lot of the places we have seen in the UK were about the same cost as 3D printed models, in the £5.00 GBP-10 range. Yeah, Shapeways stuff is not the cheapest of the metal models, but it's not the most expensive either. (I will toot my own horn a bit and say also that I have had a fair few people say to me my models are better than metal castings.)
(And it can't be far off, either, since the prices of my starships are, for example, are very similar to Ground Zero Games' metal ones over the same size.)
_____________________________________________________
So, to expand, why I am using sahpeways and not doing it all myself?
Setting up your own print house is more than just getting one printer – unless that printer is one of the sort that Shapeways uses and I suspect they will have several even of those. I can't quote you a price range for those, since the last time I looked, nowhere that sold them would tell you how much they are. (And if you have to ask…)
A home printer like the replicator 2 certainly has low material costs (it cost me a mere fraction of what I have to pay at Shapeways). So sure, I do a lot of my own stuff on the Rep 2, because I'm as tighta wargamer as you all are!
But the Rep 2 has a lot of limitations which mean it isn't great for some types of model or for commerical production – at least not with only one.
One reason is because of the support material, which needs to be cleaned off. One is simply speed. It takes a good two hours to print an average tank – and that number does not change if you try to full the build plate[1]. You also can't just turn it on and leave it over night.
So if you want to sell them fom your own business and not out-source to a commerical print-house, you would need far more than one printer, just to keep a sensible load.
On top of that, you have to do all the cleaning of support material, and that can easily take another half-hour per tank.
And of course, while you're doing all that, plus all the usual stuff, you're not doing the CAD design.
The time it takes me, by-the-by, to do a tank model is on the order of about twenty to thirty hours (which breaks down to about two week's worth of sessions, since you can't do more than about four to five hours in one sitting before you start to make mistakes[2].
____________________________________________________
So, using Shapeways at least means I can keep a steady stream of releases every month (and sci-fi releases most months) instead of having to faff about dealing with orders and whatnot.
I did, in fact, start out by doing models no-one else does; but people clamoured for me to do more stuff (like the BMP-1 – and the Marders). I really only started doing the cold War stuff instead of the modern/ultramodern because that was what people wanted.
3D printing also allows you to get models that would be not very economical to produce via traditional casting methods (e.g. the IMR-2), because you will never sell that many, unlike, say MBTs and IFVs. (From talking to people (e.g. the fine folk at Kallistra), if you are likely to sell less than 5000, it generally isn't worth the investment for something like injection moulding.)
Shapeways, for all the flack I give them sometimes, then, at least allowed me to start the Shipyards up without having to invest a huge ampount of capital I wolud never have had.
(It in the end, became my full-time job when it became the alternative to the dole – and I make about as much money then as now t the moment. And if I'm brutally honest, that is because I am self-employed and do make a profit each year, I qualify for tax credit, which covers my low personal circumstances. I likely couldn't do it if I was not in the exact situation I am.)
So that's why the Shipyards is a Shapeways webstore beholden to their prices.
But – I sell stuff regularly. Not a lot, but I get a steady trickle, and the more stuff I put out and the larger my ranges get, the more I sell. (Shapeways actually made me one of the featured stores in the scifi section, which ws the point I realised they were actually paying me some attention!) So, there is a market.
The cost of 3D printing may come down with time, though it may take a few years (or it may not, since the phsyical speed of the printers is at about the limit and further accuracy is getting into the levels where you would need a sealed temperature-stable environment to go much further. The price of metal is also unfortunately, more likely to go up than down. But for the moment, they are what they are. You as the customer will have to decide whether or not you think they are worth the price or not, and on how much you want, for example, models that are not available in metal.
____________________________________________________
It is also worth noting in passing that a lot of metal casters are starting use 3D printing for their masters. If you will again forgibe my own presumption, Kallistra's new range of 144 World War I tanks are all designed by Aotrs Shipyards.
____________________________________________________
Hopefully that answered your question?
____________________________________________________
[1]Actually, that's generally a bad idea, since if a) doesn't save you any time really and b) if it goes wrong, you waste far more time and material. Little and often.
[2]Which is about all the amnount of time you'd spend doing in actual CAD work in a CAD jockey job – the rest of your work day being meetings and all the other office gubbins.)
speculates about post-Innsmouth gaming.
