Sidetracked by makexyz.com!

Have you ever known someone that said "hey, I came up with this idea, and someone else did it!".  Then you tell your friend, "yeah, yeah, whatever".  Well, I had one of those moments less than a year ago when I read about makexyz.com.  Although I owned my own 3D printer, I was pretty annoyed that companies like Shapeways charge an arm and a leg for prints out of ABS and PLA.  I can understand the premiums for printing out of powdered metal, but the common plastics shouldn't be so expensive.  Anyhow, I thought making a site that connected printer owners with those that needed things printed would be cool.  The problem was that I didn't have the ability to actually make such a site happen.  Well, now makexyz is here and I think the site is fabulous.

Here's how it works -- a user that needs something printed can search for printer operators locally, and sort by price.  He can look over the printer's specs and find something that is reasonably priced while meeting the needs for his part, like resolution, color, plastic type, etc.  Then he sends the operator a request for quote and makexyz takes care of the rest.  The invoicing system is built-in, and what I really love is how they add their commission to the final price.  It's not like eBay where you sell your item and then have to pay eBay out of your own pocket.  The commission is charged to the buyer instead.

Anyhow, these are the parts I was asked to print:

Yesterday's attempt at printing the screw piece failed because the part came off of the build platform.  I resolved this issue by using painter's tape, which PLA bonds to nicely.

Unfortunately, PLA bonds a little too well to the blue tape, and that's the caveat of a service like makexyz.com.  When I tried to remove the part from the platform, I broke it off!  So if you have signed up to print a part that ends up being challenging in some way, you could actually lose money.  I'm already almost at that point with these parts because I didn't charge enough up front.  Most people talk about charging by the gram and also for energy usage, but I think there needs to be a scaling factor for time.  Parts that require lots of time due to size or support structures are inherently a greater risk.  Therefore, you need to charge more for these parts because there's always a chance that something bad is going to happen.

I have to work with the customer on this one to see how he wants to proceed.  I've glued the piece together, and hopefully it will work, but with a 30% fill, this part might actually not be strong enough.  I will also recommend that he reslice the part so I can print it without support material.  I will also suggest that I refund his money and he find another person to print the part.  This was a very good lesson for me!