Calculate amount of plastic used?

[Jurrie Overgoor]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking about maybe buying a Makerbot Replicator with a couple of
colleges. To keep things fair, I'm thinking about a pay-per-print
system, where users pay for the material used (and a little extra for
future repairs). Is there something that will help me calculate how
much material is used per print?

With kind regards,

Jurrie

[notstarman]

Three idea come to mind right away.

First when you slice your stls in ReplicatorG you get an estimate of
the amount of plastic used and you can change the cost of plastic
under the skin forge profiles to reflect your costs.

Second someone was nice enough to make this excel calculator for you -
> thttp://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18627

Third calculate cost per gram of your plastic and weigh the resulting
print add any incidental costs such as machine and operator costs and
bill accordingly.

MSC

[Jetty]

Also, Jetty Firmware has a filament counter and trip counter (like the
odometer on your car), provided you have an LCD
screen to display it.

[JohnA.]

A few hackerspaces just do their MakerBot usage as 'pay by the minute.'    Once it starts printing, the clock starts running.

JohnA.

[W. Craig Trader]

Jetty ...

So now you're going to take on the Replicator firmware too? I'd have thought that the Gen4 firmware was enough work :-)

- Craig -

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[Jetty]

Oops, missed the "Replicator" part. Sorry but Jetty firmware doesn't
work on the Replicator.
Probably won't either, unless someone takes the time to port it, or
someone donates a Replicator
for a bigger cause. This is because I have no intention of purchasing
a Replicator as I only
just purchased my ToM a couple of months before and I've been caught
out by the whole new product thing.

Also, now I have firmware the way I want it, the Replicator in many
ways would be a bit of a downgrade
for me.

[Z LeHericy]

I'd say just take the mass of the part and multiply it by the price per unit mass of your filaments.

Then add some factor for machine and operator time and your set!

Check out my makerbot money calculator on thingiverse (my profile is Zh4x0r.)