Advantages of buying a 3D printer versus using online services

Question

I'm trying to figure out if it's worth buying a 3D printer or using an online printing service like e.g. this one in the long run. Anyone have any cost analysis?

Answer 1

It depends

If it is worth to invest in a print made for you compared to getting a printer depends on the needs you have. Thee can be informed by the type of material you want to print and the requirements that has on you. Let me give you some examples when it is simply worth it to pay:

• A metal printer costs in the thousands: upper five-digit for the most baseline and averaging in the low to mid-6-digit. Ordering a single or few printed pieces will be economical, and even ordering many parts will still be well below break-even, considering that the material sets you back by up to 600 \$ per kilo!
• A nylon powder printer starts in the middle 4-digits but easily goes up to upper 5-digits and even middle 6 digits. Ordering for a small-scale production this way still will be economical.
• Some specialty plastics need printers with very high-temperature chambers and hotends with extreme wear resistance. Such machinery can easily cost five digits, especially in large dimensions where it goes to six. Compared to purchasing price of the machine, ordering the part will be cheaper.

On the other hand, getting a printer gets cheaper once you:

• use it sufficiently, for example, to iteratively modify a designed part or produce a medium variety of parts.
• have the time and money to spare to learn and tweak your machine to do what you want.
• the amount of parts you want to make would cost you more to have ordered than a new printer, or a substantial portion thereof. For an FDM machine, the first useful machines can be priced as low as 150 \$, while 300 \$ gets you a somewhat capable Ender 3 v2 - which has developed into some kind of standard unit for printers.

Also note, that some printing services have limits on what they will produce. Commonly they will not provide services to manufacture tools or items that might violate local law or make it trivially to do so, for example copying keys or even manufacturing Keyblanks.

Answer 2

One of the biggest reasons to buy a 3D printer vs using a printing service is one of the biggest advantages 3D printing has over other manufacturing methods: rapid prototyping. If you operate a 3D printer you own to make parts you're designing yourself, you can really iterate a design in realtime, immediately measuring results (tolerances/fit, strength, working of mechanisms, etc.) and be printing the next version to test it a few minutes after the first one finishes. If part of the result you need is something you can visually evaluate during the print, you can even be working on the next iteration while the previous one prints. Most of the parts I do are small enough, and my printer fast enough, that during design iteration both myself and the printer stay busy pretty much 100% of the time.

If you're sending designs off to a printing service, you lose out on this aspect of 3D printing. If you don't get things exactly right the first time, you either have to do all the fixup with non-automated tools, or you're out a lot of money and have to wait for another order cycle all over.

This might of course make sense and be okay if you're really good at checking your work before sending it off, or if you're mostly ordering prints of things someone else already designed and tested previously.

Answer 3

Just one experience from a few years ago. I needed a single, very small part to repair a game accessory. The repair clip stl file was available on Thingiverse. I went to a local commercial 3D printing service for a quote. The quoted price? $75!

I ordered my 3D printer a week later.

Answer 4

I would think it depends on your future needs. If you will rarely need things printed then online is more convenient than buying a printer and doing the whole learning curve, storing materials etc,.

From what I have seen online, most people printing are not printing things they actually need.

If you want to produce things to sell, then you're better off doing it yourself.

Answer 5

It is probably cheaper for a business to order 3D prints than to pay an employee to get up to speed, unless that business is doing new designs regularly. This is especially true if the parts need to look professional, or need to use challenging materials (like anything other than PLA, PETG, maybe TPU).

If the business does buy a 3D printer, it can be economical to get a more prosumer model, than to pay an employee to futz with a consumer printer to coax good print quality out of it, or spend additional time modifying it- a 300 dollar printer can turn into a 1500 dollar printer with enough things going wrong or needing to be upgraded.

When evaluating the true price of an in house 3D printed part to a business, it’s important to include employee time interacting with the machine and post processing: file prep, slicing software work, prepping bed, loading filament, preheating bed, watching the first layer go down. Oh wait, it got messed up? Start again. Once printing, time spent checking in on it, then time spent unloading filament, hand post processing (trimming a brim, removing goobers, zits, strings, drilling out precision holes). It is a hands on process, especially with consumer machines. Producing parts on the clock, I figure between 40 minutes (everything runs perfect) to two hours (Murphy’s law) of human interaction for a one-off part. Batches of more than one can be less, I had little clam shell enclosures done in batches of 6 come out to about 45 minutes of labor apiece to the company, ultimately (once 3D printer was dialed in).

Another factor of overhead is a 3D printer needs a space for it to live. -Near ventilation if using noxious materials -with enough table space to have a computer near it, and some hand tools, and a clear area to post process the parts -away from employees bothered by the sound -where it can be checked on easily -where it doesn’t get cold in the winter, to the point where low ambient temperatures cause warping

Note, some of these space requirements can be sidestepped by printers with prosumer features: WiFi transfer of gcode to the machine (computer doesn’t need to be near printer), full insulated enclosures (cold ambient temperature resistance and less noise) with air filtration (may not need ventilation for fumes).

Business ownership of a 3D printer can be a waste if there isn’t someone on staff that is mechanically inclined and can use a CAD package. Without CAD skill prints are limited to what independent contractors design for the company (and who may themselves own their own 3D printer), or things that can be downloaded from the internet.

As an asset, it can be difficult to sell a 3D printer for anywhere near what it is worth, especially with aftermarket modifications. They are large and heavy and delicate so local sales are preferred over shipping, which severely restricts the market, especially outside urban areas.

Not a business? Time on your hands? Go for it.