The Cost of 3D Printing

Image courtesy of "Ctgutter"

My new printer which I planned on doing this blogpost about, but UPS says that the printer will not be delivered until friday.  As blog posts for english are due on friday nights, it would be cutting it rather close doing that. So, as I have just sold my printer I decided to do this post on the cost of 3D printing.

To start I tallied the the cost when I first got into 3d printing.  The cost was $410, about $360 for the Printrbot Simple with volume upgrade, $20 in shipping, and $30 for a roll of filament.  Throughout owning my printer I bought an additional two spools which totalled $60, then I bought a broken Filastruder for $60, and spent about $25 fixing it.  This brings my total $555.   This sounds like a lot of money, and it is. However, I just sold my Printrbot for $330, this is actually more than I though I would get for it, but it makes sense.  I sold it fully assembled, and included about 2 kilos of filament.  Although I have not sold it, if I sold my Filastruder right now I could get just about $200 for it, possibly more.  My assets (the filastruder, and Printrbot Simple) have a combined value of about $530.  Thus if I  quit printing, got up, and left this hobby, and I hadn't of bought my new printer. The hobby of 3D printing would only have costed me $25.  Which isn't that expensive at all, I have had so much fun making things, designing, and building. All these numbers are completely thrown out the window as soon as I bought a newer, more expensive 3D printer.  However, because I plan on keeping my Filastruder the cost of owning this printer is very low, less than $6 a month.  To me this is a lot better and more fun than buying a new Xbox or similar things.