Buying a printer versus outsourcing
Quick answer
At $18 a part from a service and about $3.70 a part in house, a $400 printer pays for itself in roughly 28 parts. Below that, outsourcing is cheaper and involves no learning curve.
The arithmetic is exact. Whether your time is worth the rate you enter is a judgement only you can make, and it is usually the number that decides the answer.
The printer only pays for itself if you actually print those parts. A machine bought for a single project and then left idle never reaches break even, whatever the arithmetic says.
This ignores the value of iterating quickly, which is often the real reason to own a printer. Getting a revised part in four hours instead of four days changes how you design.
Printers at the price you modelled
Cards re-order to sit closest to the printer cost you entered.
- Creality
Creality Ender 3 V3 SE Beginner-Friendly 3D Printer with Auto Leveling
$186.14 Check pricePrices change often - Creality
Creality Ender 3 V3 SE 3D Printer with Sprite Extruder
$219.00 Check pricePrices change often - Creality
Creality Ender 3 V3 SE 3D Printer Bundle with PLA Filament 4 Packs (Black+White+Red+Blue)
$225.95 Check pricePrices change often - BAMBULAB
Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer + LED Lamp Kit, Ready-to-Use for Beginners
$249.00 Check pricePrices change often
Common questions
Is it cheaper to buy a 3D printer or use a service?
For a handful of parts a year, a service is almost always cheaper and involves no learning curve, no maintenance and no failed prints. Owning a machine wins once you are printing regularly, because the per part cost in filament is usually a dollar or two against ten to thirty from a service. The crossover is commonly in the range of twenty to fifty parts for an inexpensive machine.
Should I count my own time?
Include it if you would otherwise be doing paid work, and consider leaving it out if printing is a hobby you enjoy. It is usually the number that decides the result, because six minutes a part at a professional rate can exceed the filament cost several times over. Running it both ways is the honest approach, since the two answers can differ sharply.
What does a print service charge?
Desktop grade FDM parts from an online service typically run from around ten dollars for something small to several tens of dollars for a larger part, before shipping. Processes such as SLS nylon or SLA resin cost considerably more but produce parts a benchtop machine cannot match. Compare like with like: a cheap FDM quote and an SLS quote are not the same product.
When is outsourcing clearly the right answer?
When the part needs a material or process you cannot run, when it is a one off, when it must be certified or dimensionally guaranteed, or when you need it right and do not have time to learn the failure modes. Buying a machine to make one bracket is rarely rational, and there is no shame in a calculator that tells you not to buy the thing it is surrounded by.