Hey I was thinking about how to invest my bitcoins and I spoke to a friend of mine who is a 3d printer distributor
in Canada. This industry seems to be booming. The demand for 3d printing such as models and prototype is much
greater than the actual supply. Many of his 3D printing clients don't even have enough time to fulfill their orders.
The profit margins are also huge. Cost per 3d cm is $10 where you can charge $50 or more per 3d cm. The average profit per order is around $3000. The only problem is that a basic industrial strength 3D printer starts at 50,000.
Do you think a group of members would be willing to invest bitcoins and own a piece of a 3D printer. We will all get to do the 3D printing at cost, and send in any order we may have. If any one of us gets two or more orders it pretty much pays for the investment and the rest is profit.
What do you guys think?
Do you have any actual experience running a 3D printer? It's not something you can just buy and it magically starts producing 3D models, you have to learn how to use the control software and recognize when a proposed model isn't going to work.
How are you planning on gaining business? More and more 3D printing houses have websites where a user can upload a model and get an automatically-generated production quote. I'd think a site like that would be a major investment in itself.
For the material costs and prices you quote, do you mean cubic centimeter or cubic meter? $10/cubic centimeter is too high and $10/cubic meter is too low, so either way your math is a bit suspect. Check out
http://www.shapeways.com to see what kind of competition you'd be dealing with.
