3D Printer Cost of Electricity.
I saw a 3D printer for sale today, and an example of a Light Shade that can be printed. I wondered about the true cost of the Light Shade, taking into account all costs.
The example Light Shade (Voronoi) said it would use 631 grams of plastic filament. So that would cost $22 at $35 per kg filament cost.
It would take 83.5 hours to print it, and at about 50 watt power consumption, that is about 4.175 kWh of power, so about $1.15 in electricity, at my current kWh cost of 27 cents.
So the light shade would cost $23.15, not including the cost of the program to run it. Some of these may be free.
Is it worth $500 for a 3D printer? Maybe, but not yet for me.
Update:
I checked the cost of the Voronoi lamp shade program. It comes in two versions, one High Detail, one in Low detail.
The low detail version is Free, but the High Detail was $15, down to $10.50 at the moment.
Total cost is now: $33.65, for the high quality result.