How many people in this community use (or used to use) 3D Hubs?

Sub.

(NOTE: This is a little self serving, but our stuff is free… so…)

We’re working on features of the Polar 3D Cloud to do exactly this type of thing. Right now, however, you can “invite” people to submit jobs to your printer and you can control what gets printed. This would allow them to submit jobs, but you could then charge them for printing if you want.

Polar3D is definitely building the right tools for this. Once the Printrbelt finally drops, it’s a perfect match for this. I’ll have printers opened up for the public to print files on them for fun.

On another note, Garin at Autodesk ran a program / demo booth at Autodesk University that highlighted the fabrication of a complex, multi-machine model from Fusion 360… an amplified speaker- pcb by othermill, laser cut speaker grill, Cnc milled wooden speaker box, 3d printed pcb enclosure, a knob turned on a Cnc lathe. I think there is a future in doing small business with people w a micro Cnc fab shop, soldering skills and hand tools. A one stop shop making a whole complicated project and drop shipping it to customers. These would probably be most profitable if the shop owner designed the product, but I could see newbies w an idea utilizing the paid expertise of a designer/fabricator to make a thing never possible before these tools became affordable to mere mortals.

@Brook_Drumm I´m currently trying to establish one of those fab-shops with a certain specialization.

It might be good to deglobalize a little and try to get components locally first even if they turn out to be more expensive. I mean some products are shipped around the world twice to get to the final assembly just to bring the final price down by 5 % (or raise the profit by 5%). I suppose that does more damage than it helps anyone.

Independent fab shops ideally manufacturing most of the parts themselves. I would really welcome that kind of small “industrial revolution” :slight_smile:

Hey guys! Keep me in the loop on any 3D hubs alternative sites. Some of my friends here in south Texas are interested in switching. Although, since they no longer get orders from 3D hubs, it really isn’t switching…

i have seen a few attempts to make a replacement site, but nothing that grew
there are a few sites but i think most of them are targeted at a spec. country and not global

the Q is if there is even room for a site that allows everyone that can make a good print in and never kick anyone out

I was working with some people for a short while, they were directly targeting the old hubs model. They were going to call it 3D Pubs, but I think at some point or another they started wanting to make it a 3d printing social hub instead. Dunno what happened to them. They were supposed to release early 2020.

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well the reason i blew some life in to this was i was thinking about doing something

trying to do it will woocommerce instead as that i know and i have an old retired site where i was selling my own services

so all i would have to do was to make that multi-location

i dont think i can do it as 3dhubs did where each hub has their own prices but i never liked that anyway as its was a race for the bottom where people almost printed for free to get orders

right now i’m just in the brainstorm proccess and researching how and what plugings i would need for woocommerce to make it work just somewhat autoamtic