Fair price for printed items?

I am currently building a Makerbot Cupcake (strictly as a Repstrap to get to a Mendel). I have all the printed components for a Darwin. Is there a legal max I can ask for the printed components, considering the design is not my own? When determining the price I will ask, I need input from the community.

-The complete material cost for the printed components for a Darwin is around $6 dollars for the plastic, and likely $4 dollars for electricity and other consumables.

-I printed the Darwin parts on a friends Darwin, It took like 20 hours worth of printing to get all the parts , then 4 hours of cleaning and drilling to get everything assembly ready, can I include a labor rate for $10-$15 hour for my time invested in these components?

-I made ZERO modifications to the Library Objects which makeup this build. If I sell this items for for an economic profit (above my time spent, and material costs), do I owe the REPRAP organization a cut, or is selling of Darwin parts for economic profit not allowed?

So what is a fair and legal MAXIMUM price for my Darwin parts?

$10 Material costs
$210 Material costs plus labor (I still have nightmares about the sound of printing)
$300 Material costs + labor + economic profit

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2009 07:57PM by spacexula.

I make a living writing free GNU GPL software. The company I work for sells this software, with first class support, for a yearly licensing fee that is well out of range of any hobbyist. There is NOTHING wrong with charging whichever price the market will bear for free software. You have no legal restrictions. The free is free as in "free speech", not "free lunch". One will quickly realize that once a single copy of your GPL software or hardware has been sold, the recipient has all rights to it. In particular, he or she could sell a copy to a third party to recoup some of the investment. So, overcharging might not be a good business strategy for free software.

Now, for Darwin/Mendel parts something similar comes to play. You can, and IMO should charge a price that you find adequate compensation for your investment of time and money, Of course material or electricity price is just a tiny fraction of total cost. The cost for a well-ventilated, clean heated space is certainly much higher in many places. The cost of an operator being standby for 20-40 hours is incomparable.

If it really is the case that you would overcharge for your set of printed materials, others would undercut you quickly. In particular, if initially people charge $500 for a set of Mendel parts, byers may want to recoup their investment by printing two more sets of parts. As more parts providers enter the market than there are people willing to pay $500/set, the price will be forced down. In the end, market forces would ensure the price would be such that: people still would feel compelled to go through the trouble of babysitting their noisy and smelly machine for hours on end, but not so expensive that other ways (such as buying your own MakerBot CupCake or Bits'n Bytes machine) become cheaper.

Finally, there is the point of wanting to contribute back to the project that has given you so much. You might want to help out a friend starting his own Mendel, by only charging him a nominal price, or settling for a tender of sorts. This is up to you. I think would be better that many sets of parts are sold for whatever price the market will bear, rather than that the spread of RepRap is restricted to those individuals willing and able to invest a significant sum of money and copious amount of time to get a set of printed parts to give away for free.

For me personally, this is a hobby, and I would care more to give parts to somebody who I feel would give back most to the community. Monetary reward is less important. I have a good job and very limited time. If I were to print parts as "work", they would not be affordable. Still, I hope to eventually get a set or two of parts to give away to colleagues who I feel might become active members in the project. This would be my reward, and I would be happy to accomplish that. A student with lots of time to tinker on the other hand, might rig up a set of RepRap's to start a little business printing dozens of sets for $200/set to make some money to help pay bills. That would be a great benefit to the community as well.

So, in the end, it is your personal choice. This software and hardware is FREE. Unencumbered. You are FREE to do with it what you want. The machine is yours, the design is yours to use modify or profit of. If this makes you feel grateful, and makes you eager to contribute and help the cause of the RepRap project, so much the better. You're free to do whatever you wish. Enjoy!

-Geert

Wow, that's good to know. Now I am a little tempted to sell the Darwin, and go exponential on Mendel builds.

It would be a great thing to be able to go on Ebay and see 10 full Mendel print sets competing on price.

I think Dr Bowyer's original intention was that the first two sets of printed reprap parts should be offered back to the community at cost, in order to help bootstrap the project, and sort of pay the design work forward. It's mentioned on this page:

[reprap.org]

That said, it seems few people are doing it; printing out an entire set is not an easy task at the moment. My darwin takes closer to a week of printing to print a set of parts out, and uses 1.25 kg of PLA - that costs me closer to $25 USD plus shipping.

What sort of extruder was this darwin running that you were able to print everything out in 20 hours? Actually, that does sound close to the 17 mm^3/s that I've heard the BfB extruder can do. I'll have to build one for my Darwin!

Wade

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2009 12:05AM by Wade.

> What sort of extruder was this darwin running that
> you were able to print everything out in 20 hours?
> Actually, that does sound close to the 17 mm^3/s
> that I've heard the BfB extruder can do. I'll
> have to build one for my Darwin!
>
> Wade

20 hours was a rounded number, and I didn't pay for the plastic... he lied about how much it was costing him for the plastic... that bugger. His is the BfB, but I don't know the print rate.

Now that I know that it is permissible, if not optimal, to allow the market to decide the price of the printed parts...

I assume it would be best to just post the parts on Ebay for a 2 week auction, and let the market decide the price.

I think eBay is a good way to find the correct price. There is massive demand and very little supply at the moment so you should get a good price.

The maximum price is effectively set by the market already. I can't see anybody buying Darwin parts for more than it would cost to buy a RapMan minus the cost to get the non RP parts.

I can only see a moral obligation to pass on two sets for free if you received a free set in the first place. If you paid £750 for a RapMan then there is a lot less incentive.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

nophead,

Quote
I can only see a moral obligation to pass on two sets for free if you received a free set in the first place. If you paid £750 for a RapMan then there is a lot less incentive.

You nailed it on the head with this statement. We've received very little to no assistance in our project (we've received tonnes of encouragement though), but we still intend to offer a cheap kit to someone who seems to be helping where they can (we already have this one person picked out).

If we can convince those people who build their own from scratch to produce even one RepRap parts kit and sell it cheap it would probably push this project ahead in leaps and bounds.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2009 03:29PM by Adam.m.Nelson.