vinnie90 - imagine a model tree with branches and a model cube. Both have the same volume.

Printing the cube will be fast and no supports. Printing the tree however will be difficult. Tons of geometry, more slicing time, supports, print time, and more material (supports).

This is just me. Like I said I dont want to miss out on any jobs because they see something on my profile that I dont use. Even if you can have it as a either or feature that would be awesome.

bmmal - I agree with you Vinnie. The more time a machine runs then the more wear it gets. The other way of looking at it is, the tree should cost more because the time is a potential opportunity cost. Let's say you have 2 projects where one has cubes and one has the tree. You can only pick one to print. Both are the same volume and are willing to pay the same. Which one are you going to choose to print?

vinnie90 - I am glad I am making sense. lol

Time is money.

nyl0cke - My solution to this problem is I put my per hour pricing in my description. I have a base cost (like $7) that gets automatically charged for any job, and then a per hour for different qualities (more expensive for higher quality, different materials, etc)

vinnie90 - ^^ I totaly agree with you. I dont know if I dont that or not but I will have too. Once I get a break. I think it would be nice to have it also on the "Find 3D Printers" page.

Right now the page shows the volume charge amount. It would be cool to have the volume or time which ever one you want.

marcnicol - Another vote for time calculations from me. This is how I normally do it when I get asked for a quote. The cost of the plastic (for standard materials) isn't really high enough to be a major factor. It's the time it takes that's the biggest cost factor as nothing else can be done with the machine while it's being used.

bmmal - I factor in time by increasing my material markup as the time to print a given volume increases.

I don't want to seem like I'm complaining about friendly competition. However, the impression I get from people who do not mention anything about quoting or other cost factors in their profiles is that they are only using the volume of the part. I feel like this is really debasing the value of 3D printing and they are not realizing that by the time they have started the machine, sliced, etc it really wasn't worth their time. I for one was doing prints for very cheap, so much so that a few customers actually told me I had to increase my prices. Of course having the confidence of a commercial machine will help justify that as well.