Controversy Over Shapeways Gold Plating Formula?

A while back the Shapeways 3D Print service toyed with Gold Plating on stainless steel printed models. Evidently this trial was successful, as they have now announced a new, permanently available material: Gold Plated Stainless Steel. 

 

This sounds great, as we previously postulated that a ton (well, maybe not an *actual* ton, but lots anyway) of imaginative jewelry would be printed. Now aspiring 3D jewellers will have to contend with a new pricing structure for gold:

 

0cm³ < to ≤1cm³    = Min. price $20

1cm³ < to ≤  5cm³  = $11/cm³

5cm³ < to ≤ 10cm³ = $10/cm³

> 10cm³ = $9/cm³

 

That's pretty clear, no? There are several ways to price gold plating, and Shapeways had to decide on a method that is both easy to understand but provides the optimum pricing. The price should go down as more gold is used, since the gold - a fixed cost - increases, while the labor expended by a goggled gold dipper is about the same per unit. We think the scheme is reasonable, although the gold used is proportional to the model's surface area, not its volume - and some models could indeed be pathological in this respect. 

 

Some in the Shapeways community were confused by the new pricing in the announcement's comments: 

fx2: I thought one of the Shapeways goals was to have a self explaining pricing model 

Whystler: the accuracy of how it reflects the amount of work that goes into a gold model compared to a stainless model is not so clear.

 

Readers were seemingly confused by the scheme which probably should read like this:

 

• from 0cm³ < to ≤1cm³    = Min. price $20
• plus any additional 1cm³ < to ≤  5cm³ @ $11/cm³
• plus any additional 5cm³ < to ≤ 10cm³ @ $10/cm³
• plus any additional cm³ over 10cm³ @ $9/cm³

  

We're quite happy with this pricing. And also that we managed to use "Gold Dipper" in a post. 

 

Via Shapeways

Comments

[duann]

Thanks Fabbaloo,

Point taken on the gold plating pricing formula, we will be sure to continue to learn from this and will endeavor to make any further non-linear pricing as simple to understand as possible.

We will have more gold news soon too..

[John Hardin]

@duann: Perhaps a graph of cm³ vs. total price, or a simple javascript applet that allows the user to enter a volume and get out the total cost?