Hi all.
I‘m New here. And i‘m thinking about to buy my first 3D Printer a Form 2.
And i know there is already a thread about calculation but its from 2014.
I made now a calculation sheet by my own. But im not sure how much hours i need to calculate the depreciation of the form 2 , form wash, form cure? Have someone an example of calculation?
Sorry for my English 
Greetings Léo
If you have a certain product to sell, the Form 2 can make a lot of sense (depending on what the product is, volume, lack of alternative manufacturing options, etc).
If you are thinking of selling printing services with the Form 2, I think it will be pretty challenging. Unless you have specific connections right now who would want to use you because of a relationship or proximity, I think you will find it challenging to get enough business to justify the printer.
Thanks for your answer. The point is, in first case i want to use the printer for hobby. And im not sure if it is too expensive and t the end i want also to print for family and friends and they need only to pay the material. But if somebody else want a part i would like to calculate the prize correctly. So i calculated that the printer print 50% a day and this for 2 years…so thats nearly 9000 hours…and so it costs 0.63 per hours. Are my thoughts correct?
I have a Form1+ and parts using standard resins cost around 25 cents per cm³ + which includes 1 tank per liter of resin. 75 cents per ml is slightly higher than what you see on 3d hubs but pretty much in the ball park.
Make your math easy and charge $1.00 per ml and you should be fine, covers yourself in case of a misprint.
I don’t know that you can claim a certain cost per hour… There are times our printer is going non-stop and there are times when it will sit idle for a couple of weeks.
You can download Preform (the software for generating print files for the Form 2) and you can drop a part in, generate supports and see how much volume of resin the part would take to make. Add 10% for residue and waste and you are probably pretty accurate. From there, you can calculate the cost per print using the resin costs.
If you are using it as a hobby, you are the only one who can determine whether it is too expensive. It is on the high end of expense for a hobby machine, but it is competitive in print quality to professional machines.
We use it in R&D and it has saved us untold amounts of money and time. Being able to design and iterate in a couple of days is amazing.
So now i’m finally at my PC to write a longer answer.
Thanks Ken for your answer i will think about it…
@themedulla: So you would not recommend to buy a Form 2 only for Hobby? because of the prize? I already tried Prefrom
And thanks for your answer. Here i will show you in detail what i have calculated. (is all in Swiss Francs)
Form 2 costs: 4480 CHF. so a year has nearly 8700 hours. so if i take 50% of it is nearly 4500 hours. so if i want to have the money back in 2 years i need to calculate 0.72 per hour.
Same for form wash and cure…but there i take 10k hours and 8k hours… so is 0.09 and 0.16
Material Standard it costs 187 CHF… so 0.19CHF/ml
electricity is 0.18CHF/kWh
So now for a 100 ml part that take 10 hours is:
Material: 18.70
Printer costs: 7.21
Wash & Cure: 0.09
in this example i dont care about m work time
and i want for the IPA and gloves: 1 CHF per 25 hours of Machine working so here is 0.4
and to buy a new resin tank after 3000 ml it costs for this job 2.67
so in total is 29.71 CHF
with 5% of failure is 31.19 CHF
So i want to now if i’m right with this calculation…? and remember is Swiss Francs not Dollars or Euros…
Thanks all for this discussion and answers 