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by janalsncm 66 days ago
Well at a minimum it bought him a new printer so it’s not all wasted. And if the $3352 represents mostly fixed upfront costs, the issue is revenue imo.

> Expanding your plastic filament palette requires upfront investment

Just a guess, but the number includes buying an entire 3D printer which you don’t have to keep doing.

2 comments

>Well at a minimum it bought him a new printer so it’s not all wasted

It got him way fewer new printers and more work compared to working at McDonalds and buying the printer with the salary. Opportunity cost.

They do wear out...
I would amortize it over 5 years. Plus maintenance cost for replacement parts. After 5 it may still work but your competitors upgraded and so must you.
This guy only made 50 sales and 3000 hours of print time. I'm actually somewhat confused at how they need to keep replacement parts stocked up for that kind of low runtime.

This is either a bad choice of printer, some kind of user error, or supreme bad luck.

I don't even know how to get a clog printing with PLA.

3000 hours is a lot for a 3D printer, especially if you're not printing in PLA OR you are doing lots of filament swaps OR you're experimenting with different nozzles and filaments.

If you load your printer with one 10kg spool of PLA, odds are good you'll go a while without issues.

10 Kg spools is murder on your extruder gears, I would not recommend going above 5.
Crappy filament and improper temps will do it and you can just 'cold pull' the clog out