OK so what gives here. After sprueing the crap out of this model, purchased before the pricing change was $51.69.
Before-sprue part count
17 parts and before SW price changes:
After SW price change for the same model:
After sprue part count = 1, with 6 less parts (less material volume but I did not investigate the added sprue material voilume) and 9 parts moved inside one shell to reduce machine space where the six parts are now a separate model as a single part also; note that overall print height did not change:
So $58.70 + $6.72 = $65.42 overall cost for a totally sprued model vs $80.70 for separate parts in the new pricing. So while it is a 19% reduction in the new pricing structure, the new pricing is a 21% increase over my original 17 piece kit and a 56% increase over the original SW pricing.
So what does anyone recommend, I think there are 3 options?:
- Sprue the second part to the first adding machine space?
- Leave the second part loose in the kit for a per part increase? (would this also save the $2.50 setup fee as it would not be a completely separate design?)
- Leave the two parts separate as they are now?
This is just one example and I do not like the risks of my customers damaging any of the parts to remove them from the sprues (a fact which everyone seems to ignore).
Some of my other multi-part models saw no cost benefit to sprueing which was quite surprising so i left them alone and allowed a minor price increase.
There actually seems to be a price tipping point where $mutli-model parts < $sprued price at about 4-5 parts; any more parts than that and the per-part fees overcome the other new costs such as machine space, etc. This part saw minimal cost benefit to sprueing, likely due to the added cost of the sprue material, so I left it alone. This also avoids any breakage issues by the customer.
https://www.shapeways.com/product/T...enerator?key=b7c06d455110cddd689628e8d93a88cc
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