3D Printing Price Check

By on August 15th, 2012 in Service

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You’ve got a terrific model you want printed at high resolution in a great material. What do you do? You spend some of your valuable time checking out the prices at each of the 3D print services by tediously entering the specifications of your model into their price calculators. 
 
Or, you use 3D printing price check. 
 
It’s a beta web service by the “founders of The Society for Printable Geography that accepts your model’s specifications (volume in cc, surface area in cm3 and bounding box in cm) using a ridiculously easy-to-use form. Then it instantaneously (as in, while-you-type!) reaches out to the major 3D print services and displays the cost to print your model on their service in various material options. And it’s sorted by price, with the most expensive way down at the bottom. 
 
3D Print Price Check works by using the 3D print services’ API to enquire online directly, but failing that they attempt to duplicate the pricing algorithm found at each service, thus you might find that the price estimates might be off, should a 3D print service suddenly changes their pricing methods. 
 
Of course, there is a very reasonable disclaimer: 
 
Attention!
All prices shown on this page are approximate estimates of the actual charges by each service. You can read about how these estimates are calculated on the methods page. Please obtain a quote of the true cost of any product you consider before making a buying decision.
 
The services surveyed by 3D Printing Price Check include: Ponoko, Shapeways, Sculpteo, i.Materialise and Kraftwurx. We haven’t seen Cubify or several other likely suspects in there yet, but perhaps they will be added in the future. 
 
3D printing just got a little bit easier!
 
Via 3DPrintingPriceCheck (Hat tip to Jonas)

By Kerry Stevenson

Kerry Stevenson, aka "General Fabb" has written over 8,000 stories on 3D printing at Fabbaloo since he launched the venture in 2007, with an intention to promote and grow the incredible technology of 3D printing across the world. So far, it seems to be working!