Systematic proposal to calculate price of prototypes manufactured through rapid prototyping an FDM 3D printer in a university lab

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a systematic study to formulate the cost of prototypes manufactured through rapid prototyping (RP) an fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer in a university lab.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper has a theoretical‐conceptual approach. This approach is carried out by studying and proposing a methodology for calculating the cost of pieces prototyped an FDM 3D printer.

Findings

This work originated from a gap in literature to establish a way to calculate the price of RP pieces from FDM 3D printers in universities' labs, since no similar work has dealt with this RP technology and has not taken into account the costs of post‐processing step. The results suggest that the formulation may be used to calculate price of prototyped pieces through FDM 3D printer.

Research limitations/implications

The systematic approach proposed by this research to formulate cost for the RP pieces is initially oriented only to modelling technique by FDM 3D printer. Considerations on operator's and designer's hourly rates are those practiced in Brazil, which may differ from other countries.

Originality/value

The paper's scientific contribution is a specific formulation to calculate price of prototyped pieces through FDM considering the post‐processing way, which differs from previous published works. The formulation implies that the execution times and the amount of material used were obtained by internal calculation of the tested machine. This is different from what has been already studied by previous literature which considers an index that encompasses the machine operation cost in function of time. It is aimed that the results obtained here are accurate, since error margins of the process variables are reduced.

Citation

Henrique Pereira Mello, C., Calandrin Martins, R., Rosa Parra, B., de Oliveira Pamplona, E., Gomes Salgado, E. and Tavares Seguso, R. (2010), "Systematic proposal to calculate price of prototypes manufactured through rapid prototyping an FDM 3D printer in a university lab", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 411-416. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552541011083326