5 ms·
Though I like the idea, I feel like this would work much better as a business if you had professional printers instead of (what appears to be) Makerbots in the
by josephpmay 13y ago
Though I like the idea, I feel like this would work much better as a business if you had professional printers instead of (what appears to be) Makerbots in the vending machine. The fact that this is limited to small, one colour designs greatly lessens the appeal. Also, I am concerned that objects would break coming down that shoot mechanism.
- davorak 13y agoIt does take a considerable larger investment though to get that started compared to a makerbot.
- tnicks 13y agoSo some back of the envelope calculations here...correct me if I misstep: They average 5.70 per product. Assumption - 1 product per hour. Assumption - 20hrs/day (leaving time for adding more plastic and down time) This totals about $114/day and at 7 days a week this would take approx. 16 days to pay for the box itself. Now include expense of filament (again, approx $20 per day for 20 pieces or so, this is a guess and highly depending on the product and I am assuming they took that into account) for a total of about 20 days of constant 20hr/day operation to pay for just the materials and printer. Now include the costs of creating a queuing system for procrastinators who don't pick up their stuff right away. And technician time to manage errors, refills, maintenance, etc. If you can get 250 people to buy a product this sounds like a decent idea. Now just make sure neat things can be printed and you are a winner. I may have to try this.
- recursive 13y agoOn this scale, it seems like the retail frontage space would be a non-trivial expense.