Till-all-R1 wrote:-Kanrabat- wrote:ZeldaTheSwordsman wrote:I have $36 to spare (Shapeways shipping is ouch).
Not just the shipping. Shapeway also charge production fees. Plus the price of the things themselves is pretty ludicrous.
But eh, that's the price to pay for things that are literally printed one at a time.
Yeah I suppose, but the printer is doing pretty much all the labor so it's pretty much all markup anyway. lol It would be different if they had a more "hands on" and were actually "casting" molds like we used to have to do in the old days for stuff.
It's not the 3D printer that puts in the work of modelling the parts, though.
That's where the real work on the seller's end comes in (especially when it comes to add-on parts that have to be custom-developed), and what they're getting reimbursed for.
Till-all-R1 wrote:Look I get it there's a market for this 3rd party stuff but if it gets to be too expensive you run the risk or pricing yourself out of said market. With the higher prices of these toys as is I can't fathom adding another $30+ to it for fan made items that cost $3 to make.
Except you're not paying for someone to run you off a copy or two on their personal 3D printer here.
You're paying partly to reimburse someone for their development work on the item, and partly for a 3D printing
factory to do a single-item or small-lot on-demand run of the item in a plastic of your choice (at least, from the options offered) on one of their enterprise-grade printers. And the seller has to charge enough that there's still something left to pocket after that factory takes their cut.
If the items were being run off directly by the designers, then they
would be cheaper (and indeed, they are in cases where that happens)... but they'd most likely be on a home-grade printer, there wouldn't be as much materials choice (if any), and there's also a limit to how much an individual fan can crank out and ship out. Do you remember how dark0v would get backlogged out the wazoo? A 3D printer only does so much to alleviate that.