What a print actually costs
- Material — grams × price per gram (the easy part).
- Machine time — depreciation, maintenance, and the printer being unavailable for other jobs.
- Electricity and consumables — nozzles, beds, glue, and drying.
- Failure rate — some prints fail; the successful ones carry that cost.
- Labour — slicing, monitoring, support removal, and finishing.
How 3D3D prices
We publish per-gram material rates at two tiers — customer and maker (20+ identical units) — and itemise machine time and shipping separately on every quote. You see the gram count, the material, and the total before you approve anything. No mystery markup.
For makers setting their own prices
Price the whole job, not just the plastic. Undercutting on grams trains customers to expect unsustainable prices and burns out the people doing good work. Value the time — it's most of the real cost.