What a print costs when the shop is around the corner

What a print costs when the shop is around the corner

There is a number that decides whether a small print job makes sense, and it is not the price of the object.

It is the difference between what the object costs and what it takes to get it made. That difference is where almost all of the surprise lives.

The part everybody quotes

The material has a price per kilogram, and the machines have a price, and the comparison is easy to make and easy to win in the wrong direction.

It is easy because it is the only part with a number printed on it. Everything else in the calculation is a consequence of how the job is set up, and those consequences are where the money actually goes.

The parts nobody quotes

A job that takes forty minutes of machine time is not a forty-minute job. There is the changeover, there is the plate, there is the cleaning, and then there is the first attempt that fails and the second attempt that does not.

The second attempt is usually faster, which is exactly why the first one misleads you. If you price a job from the first attempt, you will overprice it. If you price it from the ideal case, you will underprice it.

Local changes the arithmetic

This is where the location of the shop stops being an address and becomes a variable.

A job that has to travel is not a job with a price, it is a job with a price and a radius. Past that radius the freight eats the difference that made the shop attractive in the first place.

Hatsumeika is that case: printing done in Anápolis, for pieces and gifts, where the customer walks in or the job never leaves the city. It is at https://hatsumeika.com.

ImpressorasBR is the national picture of the same decision: which machine does what, which filament goes with which machine, and where the services are. It is at https://impressorasbr.com.

The comparison I actually wanted

Reading those two together answers the question I could not answer anywhere else. Not "which printer is best", but "for the thing I want to make, where should it be made, and what does the choice do to the total".

That is a much smaller question than the one the spec sheets answer, and it is the one that shows up on the invoice.