US (and some internationally) that are ready to print/create your 3D models. Several years ago, you were
able to go on 3DHubs’ website and see the names and individual printers of normal people with their own
printers, and choose to send your business to specific people (sometimes with printers just in their garage!).
3DHubs was a resource to find local printers to which to send your money to support your local economy.
In the intervening years, 3DHubs has abstracted that “personal connection” layer to be more like the other
services in this list. But behind the scenes, there are still some hobbyist printers waiting to print your model
at the same time as professional manufacturers with $1M+ machines. Figure 7-6 shows an excerpt from
the 3DHubs homepage.
3D HUBS WORKS SIMILARLY TO THE OTHER OUTSOURCING SERVICE BUREAUS, BUT
WITH SOME NOTABLE DIFFERENCES:
• You may be supporting your local economy by purchasing from 3D printers in your area. 3D Hubs
used to tell you who was printing your models, but they no longer do.
• While high-end materials / printing options are available from which to choose, there are still con-
sumer 3D print providers (using printers which cost under $5,000) benefitting from the centralized
3D Hubs website.
• You get access to slightly less expensive materials like PLA as well as ones that are more exotic/
experimental like hybrid carbon fiber materials and flexible materials.
Similar to the international service bureaus, 3D Hubs also quotes you an instant price. This might include a
flat “setup” fee and the charge to make the print based on the cubic centimeter volume of the 3D model.
FIGURE 76: The home page for 3D Hubs.
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US (and some internationally) that are ready to print/create your 3D models. Several years ago, you were
able to go on 3DHubs’ website and see the names and individual printers of normal people with their own
printers, and choose to send your business to specific people (sometimes with printers just in their garage!).
3DHubs was a resource to find local printers to which to send your money to support your local economy.
In the intervening years, 3DHubs has abstracted that “personal connection” layer to be more like the other
services in this list. But behind the scenes, there are still some hobbyist printers waiting to print your model
at the same time as professional manufacturers with $1M+ machines. Figure 7-6 shows an excerpt from
the 3DHubs homepage.
3D HUBS WORKS SIMILARLY TO THE OTHER OUTSOURCING SERVICE BUREAUS, BUT
WITH SOME NOTABLE DIFFERENCES:
• You may be supporting your local economy by purchasing from 3D printers in your area. 3D Hubs
used to tell you who was printing your models, but they no longer do.
• While high-end materials / printing options are available from which to choose, there are still con-
sumer 3D print providers (using printers which cost under $5,000) benefitting from the centralized
3D Hubs website.
• You get access to slightly less expensive materials like PLA as well as ones that are more exotic/
experimental like hybrid carbon fiber materials and flexible materials.
Similar to the international service bureaus, 3D Hubs also quotes you an instant price. This might include a
flat “setup” fee and the charge to make the print based on the cubic centimeter volume of the 3D model.
If you don’t mind searching for a good printing partner at a cheaper cost, then try 3D Hubs. If you are looking
for assurances of material quality, or are working under strict business processes and protecting sensitive
designs to comply with your own company’s internal processes, then purchasing from the other full service
providers mentioned earlier may be a better choice for you.
THE BENEFITS OF 3D PRINTING AT HOME
Certainly many of the 3D prints you see on the Internet today were produced in people’s garages and
homes. 3D printing at home offers the hobbyists and makers faster feedback on their 3D model, as shown
in Figure 7-7. They can print each version at home, not having to wait days to receive the print as is the case
with service bureaus.
Where 3D printing at home costs around four cents per cubic centimeter, it is not uncommon to see a price
of 50 cents to $1 per cubic centimeter from an online service bureau (plus a setup fee added on top of that).
That represents a 10-25x increase in price over printing it yourself, not counting your own time for setting
up, monitoring the print, and cleaning up.
A disadvantage for 3D printing at home is one that is also difficult to quantify. It’s the amount of time that
it takes you to do everything that “surrounds” the actual 3D printing. This includes leveling the build plate,
FIGURE 76: The home page for 3D Hubs.
FIGURE 77: 3D printing at home gives hobbyists quicker feedback on a 3D model
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FIGURE 78: Advantages and disadvantages for FDM printers compared to resin/SLA printers for printing at home. The chart includes
the general prices for printers in the consumer realm.
making sure your filament is stored properly, and other factors that take time and some knowledge in order
to do successfully. For the most part, once you have gone through your initial learning process for 3D print-
ing at home, the process becomes easier. The analogy is like going to a restaurant versus making the food
at home from scratch! Although we can say, cooking at home is easier than 3D printing at home! Another
disadvantage is not having access to a wide range of material options, unless you are willing to stock many
different kinds of materials, in different colors and properties.
But as we mentioned in the beginning of the book, the act and process of 3D printing at home and being a
DIY hobbyist is very rewarding. Remember the last time you learned a new skill—woodworking or making
ceramics, for instance—and then mastered it enough to get the results you wanted? 3D printing at home
provides you with similar opportunities to expand your knowledge and the satisfaction of honing your skills.
VARIABLES INVOLVED WHEN 3D PRINTING AT HOME
There are things to consider if you want to print at home. Let’s run down the list of the differences between
printing at home with an FDM printer and printing at home with an SLA printer (Figure 7-8).
PRICE
On average, FDM printers will cost less than resin printers per cubic centimeter of print area. What this means is
that if you are looking for a large print volume, then FDM printers will be less expensive for those larger models.
If you are OK printing dental models, tabletop gaming figurines, or other small items, a $300 mSLA (masked
SLA) resin printer will be fine for your needs and produce very detailed models. While there are many printers out
there (both resin and FDM), pricing for these printers can be described as: starts at “rock bottom price but trou-
blesome” and moves to “acceptable price with low failure rate” as the price ramps up.
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At the time of this writing, FDM printers can be had for $300 from companies like Creality (creality3d.shop)
with printers getting solid with the Prusa MK3S around $750. Small build envelope resin printers can be
found from EPAX3D (epax3d.com), Elegoo (elegoo.com), and Anycubic (anycubic.com). These printers are
also in the $250-$400 range but have smaller build volumes than the FDM printers above. Larger mSLA
resin printers start around the $1200 range.
SIZE
Mainstream FDM printers can print objects up to 11” x 11” x 11” while many entry level resin printers print
comfortably at only a smaller 6” x 4” x 6” size.
QUALITY
What the SLA printers lack in volume of print area, they more than make up for in the quality of the result-
ing print. SLA/resin prints from consumer printers are of such good quality that they can look like injection
molded parts. FDM printers, on the other hand, produce visible line layers.
SPEED
FDM printers are limited to an upper limit of about 100–150mm/second print speed, having to trace out
each line in each layer individually with molten material. SLA (Laser-based) resin printers work the same
way, but they trace with a laser beam and are typically much faster when completing a layer. But one of the
drawbacks of resin printing is that the model needs to be separated from the bottom of the resin vat. This
process requires force to break away the cured layer of resin and then to move the build plate back down
for another curing operation to get the next layer. This puts laser-based systems’ speed roughly on par with
FDM printers.
Resin printers (DLP and mSLA) cure an entire layer, small or large, at one time. For larger prints, or prints
that have a lot of one thing copied over and over (such as jewelry designs), DLP and mSLA printers are
significantly faster than laser SLA or FDM printers, and have predictable printing times. For these kinds
of printers the print time is equal to the number of seconds the “light” is shining added to the upwards and
ownwards movement of the build plate, per layer.
MATERIAL AVAILABILITY
FDM printers offer the most diversity with more than 50 materials (and growing) to choose from. 3D printing
service bureaus come in second place with the most variety because they own many different types of printers.
Some of these services are even willing to 3D print parts in a castable material and then traditionally cast them
using materials such as brass, bronze, or steel.
MATERIALS COST PER UNIT
When you create a model, the space inside of the model can be described using a metric of volume, which
is typically “cubic centimeters.” Online 3D printing service bureaus will give you prices for materials that are
charged at a starting flat rate, and then the number of cubic centimeters of your model is multiplied by the
price per cubic centimeter.
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If you are printing at home, you have no startup fee and your material cost will be much less. A single spool
of PLA filament, 1kg (2.2lb), will represent about 800 cubic centimeters of printable material and costs
around $21 to $35. More exotic filaments like PET or flexible filament are roughly double the price of PLA
filament, thus in the $70 range.
Resin printing has a similar price per cubic centimeter compared to FDM printing when printing with the
lower cost resins. One liter of resin contains about 900 cubic centimeters of printable material. 1Kg of fil-
ament is about 800 cubic centimeters. Assuming a parity between 1L of resin and one spool of PETG, the
prices are comparable. Resin prints tend to have thicker walls than FDM as there is no time penalty for
printing a thicker wall on mSLA printers. In the FDM world, those thicker walls would take quite a bit more
time to print. The thicker walls on resin prints serve to make the objects more structurally sound, but at a
higher material cost.
TIME NEEDED FOR SETUP/CLEANUP
This is the other critical factor that sways people in one direction or the other. With the online print services, the
base startup fee for an FDM print can be around $5. For resin prints, startup fees can be around $20. Why the
difference? Resin is much harder to work with than FDM. When you run a resin printer, you have to use gloves
to prevent the resin from getting on your hands, as well as pour the unused resin back into containers for long-
term storage. A resin print also needs to be washed off with isopropyl alcohol to remove the uncured resin, and it
needs some time in an ultraviolet curing box (or to be placed in direct sunshine) to finish curing.
For an FDM print, you just pop the print off of the build plate and everything is pretty much done. Of course, if your
workflow requires extreme detail, or you do not mind working with resin, you will enjoy the prints that resin print-
ers create.
PRODUCTION QUANTITY: LOW-VOLUME MANUFACTURING
If you are looking to create many units of a design, you have three options: 3D print them at home, go through a
service bureau, or use traditional manufacturing. Typically, creating a mold for injection molding (traditional man-
ufacturing) costs anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 for a simple mold, and then the prices increase for molds that
are more complex or that are made for producing many thousands of items. Before 3D printing there was a gap
in the market where inventors and product designers had very few inexpensive options if they wanted to produce
a thousand or less copies of an item. The economics for traditional manufacturing (with molds) only made finan-
cial sense when production neared the “several thousands” unit range.
Additive manufacturing has changed all of that. Prototypers can move to smaller production runs at signif-
icant fractions of the cost that previously were commanded by manufacturers. The economics of making
many thousands of items still favor traditional manufacturing, but a new class of “boutique” manufactures
is being created by 3D printing.
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