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Hey everybody!

A few months back I posted that I wasn’t getting any orders, and I got some very good tips back then. Now, after putting some good time in 3D Hubs, I am getting some orders, and gained about 47 orders in the last 5-6 months? That’s good, I like it, but I would like to get a more consistent income of orders, like 4-5 a week to take an average.

I’m thinking of expanding my hub for that, but I don’t know in what way. I have a few options:

- Buying an SLS or SLA printer, I would like to know if experienced hubs can tell me that this gains alot more orders than FDM printing? It is a big investment though…

- Buying more materials like Colorfabb XT, nGen,… But it always looks to me that people choose PLA because it is something they know, so I’m not sure if that will make my hub gain more orders?

- Any other suggestions…

I hope someone can help me a bit with this! :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Andreas

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Try expanding with flexible filament, wood fill, nylon, or copper fill. It’s not a huge investment and will differentiate you from other hubs. I wouldn’t touch SLA if you are only getting 8 orders a month of PLA, it’s a huge financial risk for orders that may never come at sufficient volume to pay back.

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Thanks for your input! I think indeed it’s a good idea to buy some special materials so I have more to offer. What do you think of SLS? Its the main method that is used by shapeways, sculpteo,… I found a sintratec kit for €2000.

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Thats a really big investment for a low end machine. If you had a substantial customer base and commercial customers willing to pay a lot of money for specialized machines it might be worth it, but without those you will be taking a bath and having a $$$ machine that sits idle 99% of the time, and end up having to sell the machine at half cost to the next guy… IMHO.