No – 3D printing can be a very inexpensive hobby! Here I show that an emblem that we printed (12.5 cm diameter and 10 mm high) for the kids’ principal with the school’s logo on it cost just about $1.74 in total to produce: $1.61 for color changing PLA filament and 13.27¢ in electricity costs. Many of the tools you can use for 3D printing, such as TinkerCAD & Cura, are free. 3D models can be obtained for free from website repositories like Thingiverse – and some incredibly capable 3D printers, like the Creality Ender 3 Pro, can be purchased for right around $200.
There are 3 primary costs to determine the total cost of 3D printing an object.
- 3D printer cost – A fixed one-time cost. We didn’t factor this into the cost to print a single 3D model because we were interested in what the cost to 3D print an object would be AFTER already owning a 3D printer and having paid that one-time expense. We used a Creality Ender 3 Pro to print our model. (Click HERE to see the printer and it’s current pricing on Amazon)
- Filament cost A variable cost – which will be determined by the type of filament you use and the size & density of your 3D model, the complexity of the model and whether or not extensive supports are used in printing the model. We used color-changing filament in our example. Using plain white PLA would have been cheaper – and we compare the total cost printing the emblem with both the more expensive color-changing PLA filament and the cheaper plain white PLA.
- Electricity expense Also a variable cost – which will vary with the time required to print your model, and to a lesser extent, by the temperature settings for the extruder and build plate. The specific 3D printer you use may also impact the amount of electricity used.
Specifications of Our Test Print
12.5 cm diameter disk – that was 10 mm high at it highest point. We used a 20% infill density with a concentric pattern. We printed at 50 mm / second with the extruder @ 180° C and the print bed @ 60° C. Please see the Cura settings panel for a more complete description of the settings we used.
1) 3D Printer Cost
There are some very inexpensive 3D printers out there – that cost between $180 – $300. One of the most popular in that price range happens to be the Creality Ender 3 Pro. This is an unenclosed printer that requires some relatively simple assembly. Despite it low cost – it is s surprisingly capable 3D printer! The Creality Ender 3 Pro was the first 3D printer that we purchased – and we have been very impressed with it! Click HERE to check out current pricing on Amazon, and HERE for an in depth review of this family of printers. If you are looking for a kid friendly 3D printer that is fully enclosed – please click HERE to check out this short list of the best 3D printers for kids.
Obvious, but important to note – the purchase of a 3D printer is a one-time, fixed cost.
2) Filament Cost
The disk we printed out was 12.5 cm in diameter and 10 mm high at it’s highest point. For reference – you can see the disk in my hands.
1 kg spool of 1.75 mm diameter PLA filament is about 330 meters long. I paid $25.99 for a spool of color changing filament on Amazon. You can see current pricing for color-changing PLA filament HERE – which is what we used for this disk print for the kids’ principal. With taxes it came to a total of $28.07. Shipping was included – so no extra cost there.
The slicing software I use to prepare our prints (Cura) estimated the total usage for this print to be 18.98 meters. That translates to just about 5.7% of the spool for the print (18.98 meters / 330 meters = .0575 or 5.7%). 5.7% of $28.07 is about $1.61 in total filament costs.
As a double check. Cura also calculated that I used about 57 grams of filament. The spool weighs a total of 1,000 gams – so 57 grams / 1,000 grams = 5.7%.
3) Electricity Costs
Our disk print for the principal took 6 hours and 32 minutes to complete. The Creality Ender 3 Pro uses about 120 watts – 200 watts when printing. We pay 10.21 cents / kwh in our area of upstate New York for electricity. I used all variable costs associated with the delivery of each kilowatt of electricity to our home to calculate this value. So at the high end of the estimate range 200 watts X 6.5 hours = 1,300 watts / 1,000 = 1.3 kwh. 1.3 kwh X .1021¢ = 13.27¢ total Electricity costs.
At the low end of the estimate range 120 watts X 6.5 hours = 780 watts / 1,000 = .78 kwh. So .78 kwh X .1021¢ = 7.96¢ total Electricity costs.
As you can see – for most prints – even if they take 3 times long to print as our disk – the electricity costs are truly nominal!
Total Cost of 3D Printing a Model
I’ve broken out the cost of the 3D printer itself above – so you can get an idea of what a low-end 3D printer may cost. However, I was curious about what the cost was to 3D print an object AFTER obtaining a 3D printer. The total cost to print our emblem for the kids’ principal was $1.61 for the filament and about 13¢ for the electricity. Therefore the total cost was $1.74 to 3D print our emblem.
We could have used a less expensive type of filament (such as just PLA) – which would have dropped the cost of the filament to about $1.17 versus $1.61 for the more expensive color-changing filament. If we had used this plain and cheaper filament instead – the total printing cost of our emblem would have been $1.30. HERE is an example of some cheaper plain white PLA filament @ Amazon that costs $18.99 at the time of writing and a total of $20.51 with taxes.
Alternatives to Buying a 3D Printer &/or Printing Models Yourself
There are ways to 3D print models and objects without even owning a 3D printer. One way is to find a local library in your area that has 3D printers for public use. I wrote an entire post about getting into 3D printing without buying a 3D printer that you can find HERE. Another option is to use a 3D printing service to print models that you designed yourself or models you found on an online repository like Thingiverse.
Below, you can see that I obtained a quote for printing the disk we designed for the kids’ principal. I used Craftcloud by All3DP – because it shops the job with various printer shops – and I have found it to be competitive. As you can see from the quote – the shipping is more than the printing cost! For printing our disk the cost is $6.72 and the shipping for the item is $10. It’s not as cost effective as printing it yourself if you already own a printer or are getting into this as a hobby – but it is a relatively inexpensive option. Sometimes you might want to use a service like this too if you are looking to print something that is particularly difficult or you want it printed in an exotic material (like aluminum or titanium) that you simply cannot print with your own consumer grade 3D printer.
Conclusion
I hope I have helped answer the question of HOW EXPENSIVE IS 3D PRINTING? – with a concrete example of the costs associated for a specific model. I have often wondered what the cost was per model – and I think this little exercise helped me better gauge what this hobby costs on a per-model basis.
I hope to expand this article in the future with similar calculations for a larger and more complex model.
Sincerely,
