Loomio
Fri 3 May 2024 7:23AM

Filament pricing

FB Fletcher Boyd Public Seen by 3

Right now our prices are:

Member rate

  • $0.05 / gram, rounded up to the nearest $1.00

Day Pass rate

  • $0.15 / gram, rounded up to the nearest $1.00

This system worked when we had a few generic rolls of PLA and things were largely "What's there is there".

I think a new pricing structure needs to take into account:

  1. How much the filament costs to restock

  2. How much wear it causes our machines

Tier 1

5c/10c

  1. Bought for under $30/kg

  2. Doesn't cause extra wear on the machines (Normal PLA/ABS/PETG)

Tier 2

10c/20c

  1. Bought for under $50/kg

  2. Causes slight wear on machines printing with hardened nozzles (PLA with particles in it etc)

Tier 3

15c/30c

  1. Bought for under $75

  2. Causes noticable wear on machines with hardened nozzles, likely to need spares on hand

Tier 4

20c/40c

  1. Bought for under $120

  2. Causes noticable wear on machines with hardened nozzles, need spares on hand

Pricing casual use as double member use makes it easier for people to calculate cost using the slicer without a lot of effort.

Each spool would be labelled with which tier it's in.

Does this make sense?

TW

Tom White Fri 3 May 2024 7:26AM

so if a spool is in 2 tiers (say, a really expensive spool of normal PLA) would it fall into the tier that that is highest of the 2?

FB

Fletcher Boyd Fri 3 May 2024 9:41AM

@Tom White Yep

FB

Fletcher Boyd Sat 4 May 2024 2:20PM

Feedback at a committee level is that an increased daily price floor for non members would be a good encouragement for membership.

It's likely this would be something like

> $0.10 / gram, rounded up to the nearest $1.00 - Minimum $15 across all prints in a day

This helps balance giving non members access to printing and the increased volunteer burden compared to member prints.

FB

Fletcher Boyd Mon 17 Jun 2024 10:20AM

This proposal (with the non member minimum rate bumped to $20) was adopted by the committee at the 2024-06-08 meeting.