Out of the Box is having a sale!

[orionfield]

We went through the photo ordeal on the other thread, never got good photos to see what you are getting.

I'm sure an iPhone can get better close-ups than that. This is a photo of a 3D printed item I took with my (how many years old?) Galaxy S5


You can see the build lines (shapeways FUD), but all parts were printed flat so I think it looks OK.

Sorry, but if you want me to pay more than $20 for a 3D item I want to see it at least as good as the above photo.

More 3D items with my phone:

Notice when it's bare you cannot see anything:

More:


3D shell after some sanding, with my PHONE

Duly noted. I understand what you want me to do. I honestly wont be able to do much as far as new photos for you guys for a while. I am on an extended business trip until the end of June, and since I'm halfway across the country from my workbench, I wont be able to do anything unless I can get someone else to help me with it.

[peteski]

I was planning on posting a little tutorial showing what's wrong with orionfield's photos, and what can easily be done to remedy that, but Chris' post clearly shows what's possible while using a smart phone and some decent light (even a workbench light will do it).

Not only the photos orionfield posted are very low-res. 640x480 (which was the resolution of my early digital camera had back in the '90s), in many of them the item being shown is too far from the camera. Like Chris showed, getting the camera closer to the item begin photographed will make a big difference. And also upload the photos at a higher resolution.

[Chris333]

Not trying to be hard on you. It's just hard to go all in on something you can't see. And I'm sure as in most cases your 3D designs are much better than the prints end up. So it isn't your work most are worried about. It is the printers work.

Part of the problems with 3D printing is why I designed a few things to print flat and need simple assembly. I would love a new way that does everything we all want.

[orionfield]

Not trying to be hard on you. It's just hard to go all in on something you can't see. And I'm sure as in most cases your 3D designs are much better than the prints end up. So it isn't your work most are worried about. It is the printers work.

Part of the problems with 3D printing is why I designed a few things to print flat and need simple assembly. I would love a new way that does everything we all want.

I totally get it. And from the bottom of my heart, all I've wanted to do from day one was to create something that gives the modeler the power to create what he wants. But I completely agree that the technology is a limiting factor. And everyone has their own tolerances as to what they can put up with, and what is a deal breaker to them. Personally I'm not happy with the quality and cost of 3D printing, and if I could, I would try and do better. I actually am in negotiations to procure a design for a 3D printer, and get venture funding to start producing it.  My end goal would be to create a 3D printer that is affordable, and delivers the quality that we are looking for in our hobby, that way, I could license out The CAD Files and people could just print them themselves!

If I could quit my day job today, and focus on Out of the Box full time, I absolutely would get thing together much faster, and much better than they are now. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way and learned a lot about what needs to be done to make a business model like this work.

[Mark W]

Personally I'm not happy with the quality and cost of 3D printing, and if I could, I would try and do better.

A lot of people share this opinion.  3D Printing has a long way to go still.  But at the same time, I think there a lot of "missing the forest for the trees" with what you're trying to market.  3D Printing appeals to kit builders, not the ready-to-run crowd. Use that to your advantage.

Also re-iterating the other common observations, I see a lot of text about commissioning a model, but very little examples.  But for comparison, browse through the shops in the 3D Printing Directory.  Tons of models and high resolution examples, and almost no one selling the option to commission a model. In fact, many top designers are constantly asking for input on what their next offering should be. So my biggest question is why pay to have a model designed when there are so many opportunities where I could get it designed for free, and by someone with a big portfolio of successful models?

I'd focus on that key difference between your business model and everyone else.  If you can find a competitive edge, run with it. 
In the meantime, I suggest designing a bunch of 'fillers' and a few showcase models to bulk up your shop with options and examples.

[Lemosteam]

"So my biggest question is why pay to have a model designed when there are so many opportunities where I could get it designed for free, and by someone with a big portfolio of successful models?"

I am sensitive to this thought, and depending on the scope of the project, i.e. ATSF Dyno Car kit vs. passenger car vent sprue, because as you might consider, it could take many hours to complete a large kit and several minutes to create a vent sprue.

Also note that even if research is provided to me I can still spend many hours researching on my own.  This is a much larger amount of time than one might think it to be.

Here is how I view this. (Please note that "free" below refers to design time, not profit I may add to the offering):
If someone approaches me with a request to design something that I also need for my own collection or purposes, I will design it for free and offer it to others. 

If I get a request for a variation of something I already have (up-scale, small added features, etc.)  I will do that for free and offer it to others.

If someone approaches me with a design request for something I do not want or need, a trade or payment is in order, negotiated by me and the requester.  If the requester pays, it is his or her choice to allow me to offer the design to others, as they have paid for the intellectual rights to the design and my ethical obligation to ask them first.

I have actually been ludicrously asked to design something "for the love of the hobby" and when I countered with a price the person became belligerent (SMH).

Anyway, @orionfield has every right to request payment for his time (and I am not saying you suggested otherwise) and everyone should NOT assume that a designers time is EVER free.  I stay up many hours to finish projects, and try not to let it interfere with family time, dinner, etc.

I can tell you for a fact, that the many hours I spent on the 3768 was literally worth, using my work pay rate, about $60k, no lie.  Using my design rate, it was worth $10k. As you can see there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to earn enough profit to pay myself back for that model to justify the work, but it was worth it to me because I have lusted after that locomotive in N scale for eons.

In a different way, it is the same as Max's beautiful 0-6-0- that model is priceless and he can never replace that time with the model itself.

Rant over.

[Cajonpassfan]

You tell'em, John!
Your comments are right on!
Otto

[CBQ Fan]

@orionfield is the four window caboose actually available?

[Ike the BN Freak]

I should order the no window caboose

[orionfield]

A lot of people share this opinion.  3D Printing has a long way to go still.  But at the same time, I think there a lot of "missing the forest for the trees" with what you're trying to market.  3D Printing appeals to kit builders, not the ready-to-run crowd. Use that to your advantage.

I get that, aside from model railroad subjects, we've been having some success getting commissions for 1/350 scale ship and 1/72 scale NASA Rocket kits.

I am sensitive to this thought, and depending on the scope of the project, i.e. ATSF Dyno Car kit vs. passenger car vent sprue, because as you might consider, it could take many hours to complete a large kit and several minutes to create a vent sprue.

Also note that even if research is provided to me I can still spend many hours researching on my own.  This is a much larger amount of time than one might think it to be.

Here is how I view this. (Please note that "free" below refers to design time, not profit I may add to the offering):
If someone approaches me with a request to design something that I also need for my own collection or purposes, I will design it for free and offer it to others. 

If I get a request for a variation of something I already have (up-scale, small added features, etc.)  I will do that for free and offer it to others.

If someone approaches me with a design request for something I do not want or need, a trade or payment is in order, negotiated by me and the requester.  If the requester pays, it is his or her choice to allow me to offer the design to others, as they have paid for the intellectual rights to the design and my ethical obligation to ask them first.

I have actually been ludicrously asked to design something "for the love of the hobby" and when I countered with a price the person became belligerent (SMH).

Anyway, @orionfield has every right to request payment for his time (and I am not saying you suggested otherwise) and everyone should NOT assume that a designers time is EVER free.  I stay up many hours to finish projects, and try not to let it interfere with family time, dinner, etc.

I can tell you for a fact, that the many hours I spent on the 3768 was literally worth, using my work pay rate, about $60k, no lie.  Using my design rate, it was worth $10k. As you can see there is NO POSSIBLE WAY to earn enough profit to pay myself back for that model to justify the work, but it was worth it to me because I have lusted after that locomotive in N scale for eons.

In a different way, it is the same as Max's beautiful 0-6-0- that model is priceless and he can never replace that time with the model itself.

Rant over.

Thank you for that! The main difference between Out of the Box and most shapeways designers is that I'm not the one who makes the designs. I have 4 primary mechanical engineers that work for me, which is most of the reason that I charge commissions, since I have to then go and pay them for their time. If the four of them are too busy, I have a pool of freelance talent that I can dip into to meet excessive demand if need be. There are things that I do on my own, like designing decals and custom painting, but CAD is just out of my skill range at the moment. There are times that I have taken commissions for free when they were things that I wanted for sure! Hahaha, if anyone wants anything from CNW it would probably end up costing them nothing or next to nothing! I'm also open to trades as well. I try and to as transparent and open to things as I can.

I actually had an idea over the weekend that I want your opinions on. I want to experiment with crowdfunding some projects. There were some commissions that some people came to me with but abandoned, so I was thinking of offering a low risk way for people to get their hands on a model they want. Instead of paying for a commission, they can nominate a model to be crowdfunded. Depending on the estimated development costs, for the sake of argument lets say its a locomotive shell, that will cost my engineer about $250 to design, so I would offer the model for $10 to the first 25 people. For $10 you will be the first to get model before it goes on sale to the public. For some other projects, we may list some models for only $5. That way you can take a leap of faith, with very little risk.

Something else that we're going to start doing is giving back to the community. We want to offer free commissions to Museums and Historical Societies to use for fundraising for their organizations. We would donate 75% of the profits on sales of their commissions back to their Organizations. I already have one such deal in the works with a museum in Minnesota to help raise money for some of their Locomotive and passenger car restoration projects.

The entire reason I started this company was to make the models that I wanted, that I didn't see any of the of the other manufactures making, and sharing that capability with the rest of the community! I know I've said it a lot before, but Out of the Box is not my primary job.

I've been told recently that I don't do an very good job explaining who I am and why I'm even doing this, so here's the brief version. I've been a model builder for 20 years, since I was 10. I spent most of that time building scale models, mostly 1/72 aircraft, before getting into trains 7 years ago, while I was in graduate School. I have a Master of Science in Information Management with a focus on User Experience design. I am a User Experience Architect for a software company in Silicon Valley as my day job. For those who aren't familiar with what that means, User Experience is a fairly new field where people like me design applications, websites, and services based on user research. I have tried to use a much of that experience in Out of the Box as I can, which is why I try and post new ideas here, and other forums to gauge reactions from you guys, my users!

Your comments are so important to shaping the future of Out of the Box, especially understanding your pain points, since those drive design more than anything else.

@orionfield is the four window caboose actually available?

Yes it is https://outoftheboxmodels.com/collections/cabooses/products/n-scale-cbq-ne-12-waycar?variant=261418319888

I should order the no window caboose

That or the 3 Window are prototypical for the BN Era.

[lashedup]

So my biggest question is why pay to have a model designed when there are so many opportunities where I could get it designed for free, and by someone with a big portfolio of successful models?

This is the problem with Shapeways model. There are numerous passenger car shells offered on Shapeways that are missing details, have the wrong details or just plain aren't very accurate. I'm designing a passenger car in 3D right now and being my first, it is taking a long time. Even if I were to streamline the process and cut the time 80%, the amount of time involved to design the model correctly, check drawings, check photos, check measurements, print samples, make adjustments and on and on means I'll potentially never break even. Plus people automatically ask if I'll share the file as if there is no value to the hours and hours that I put into it. That's kind of the issue with Shapeways. It primarily makes money for Shapeways, but doesn't do much for the designer at the end of the day. The more basic detail items that can be drawn quickly are probably more of an exception. 

In my mind, if you're going to take the time to design a prototype anything in CAD/3D, then you should do it right the first time. But there are lots of examples on Shapeways where "good enough" is fine for both the designer (who has probably already put too much time into it) and for the end user that has a reasonable facsimile and doesn't care if the details aren't correct. The print technology is there now, but it requires the right resins, the right printer and the right setup. Shapeways FXD is not as good as it could be. It probably works great for them in terms of maximizing the print space volumes and thus profits.

- jamie

[orionfield]

This is the problem with Shapeways model. There are numerous passenger car shells offered on Shapeways that are missing details, have the wrong details or just plain aren't very accurate. I'm designing a passenger car in 3D right now and being my first, it is taking a long time. Even if I were to streamline the process and cut the time 80%, the amount of time involved to design the model correctly, check drawings, check photos, check measurements, print samples, make adjustments and on and on means I'll potentially never break even. Plus people automatically ask if I'll share the file as if there is no value to the hours and hours that I put into it. That's kind of the issue with Shapeways. It primarily makes money for Shapeways, but doesn't do much for the designer at the end of the day. The more basic detail items that can be drawn quickly are probably more of an exception. 

In my mind, if you're going to take the time to design a prototype anything in CAD/3D, then you should do it right the first time. But there are lots of examples on Shapeways where "good enough" is fine for both the designer (who has probably already put too much time into it) and for the end user that has a reasonable facsimile and doesn't care if the details aren't correct. The print technology is there now, but it requires the right resins, the right printer and the right setup. Shapeways FXD is not as good as it could be. It probably works great for them in terms of maximizing the print space volumes and thus profits.

- jamie

YES! I completely agree! So, when someone commissions a model, there is a long development process that happens, with lots of back and forth between myself and customer, sharing renderings and making tweaks here and there until the customer is happy with the accuracy of the design. It takes multiple sets of eyes to find errors and issues. Between my efforts, comparing renderings to drawings and photos, as well as the engineer and the customer doing the same thing, we usually get pretty accurate model in the end.

It bugs me to no end how many crappy models there are with no thought to the modeler and usability. Like locomotive shells that aren't designer for a specific mechanism? It boggles my mind how anyone thinks that makes sense? If I'm making a locomotive shell, its going to be designed for a specific mechanism, or I'll make a custom mechanism for it. Same thing with a passenger car, I will either make my own interior and under-frame, or design it work with an existing one. Can't stand half-a$$ attempts.

From a money making perspective, I agree. Shapeways is the only one who profits on Shapeways, and while I'm using them for the time being until I get my in-house printing operation going. I think printing things myself is the only way I'm ever going to make a business like this profitable, and make my costs low enough to have competitive pricing.

[peteski]

It bugs me to no end how many crappy models there are with no thought to the modeler and usability. Like locomotive shells that aren't designer for a specific mechanism? It boggles my mind how anyone thinks that makes sense? If I'm making a locomotive shell, its going to be designed for a specific mechanism, or I'll make a custom mechanism for it. Same thing with a passenger car, I will either make my own interior and under-frame, or design it work with an existing one. Can't stand half-a$$ attempts.

Or models (such as passenger car or an automobile) printed as a single objects.  Yes, 3D printing enables one to print a single object with hollow interior, but that also makes impossible to finish/decorate the interior, or even install window "glass". It boggles the mind that the designer does not consider that those things will have to be done to the model in order to complete it.  To go even further, printing an automobile as a single object makes overall painting more difficult. But if the body, the frame (and possibly the wheels) are separated, painting the model becomes so much easier.

[Mark W]

I want to experiment with crowdfunding some projects. There were some commissions that some people came to me with but abandoned, so I was thinking of offering a low risk way for people to get their hands on a model they want. Instead of paying for a commission, they can nominate a model to be crowdfunded. Depending on the estimated development costs, for the sake of argument lets say its a locomotive shell, that will cost my engineer about $250 to design, so I would offer the model for $10 to the first 25 people. For $10 you will be the first to get model before it goes on sale to the public. For some other projects, we may list some models for only $5. That way you can take a leap of faith, with very little risk.

This is closer to the business model I was referring to when I talk about people designing models "for free".  @Lemosteam s reply is 100% correct, and I know just as well how long it takes to design even a basic model.  That time has to be rewarded one way or another.  So the caveat to "free" designers (aside from being relaxed on the details as pointed out) is that they're more selective on the models they do design; it's gotta have widespread appeal so that it sells more units. 

Crowdfunding the design work may be your best middle of the road approach, but you might want to be cautious about assigning blind promotional prices.   The shell may cost $250 to design, but might cost $65 each to print.  Your first 25 units covered the design work, but now you're negative $650 in materials. 

[orionfield]

Or models (such as passenger car or an automobile) printed as a single objects.  Yes, 3D printing enables one to print a single object with hollow interior, but that also makes impossible to finish/decorate the interior, or even install window "glass". It boggles the mind that the designer does not consider that those things will have to be done to the model in order to complete it.  To go even further, printing an automobile as a single object makes overall painting more difficult. But if the body, the frame (and possibly the wheels) are separated, painting the model becomes so much easier.

I'm glad we're on the same page on that. I want to say that I would never release anything like that, but I think that my M88 Tank Retreiver would call me a liar, but for the most part I don't like that practice. I think that as a model builder, I understand the process that one has to go through once they get the 3D print in their hands, so I have the models designed with that in mind.

This is closer to the business model I was referring to when I talk about people designing models "for free".  @Lemosteam s reply is 100% correct, and I know just as well how long it takes to design even a basic model.  That time has to be rewarded one way or another.  So the caveat to "free" designers (aside from being relaxed on the details as pointed out) is that they're more selective on the models they do design; it's gotta have widespread appeal so that it sells more units. 

Crowdfunding the design work may be your best middle of the road approach, but you might want to be cautious about assigning blind promotional prices.   The shell may cost $250 to design, but might cost $65 each to print.  Your first 25 units covered the design work, but now you're negative $650 in materials. 

I'm glad the concept makes sense to you guys. I still need to iron out some general rules, like how long will we wait for the full set of units to be ordered, before a project is either dead, or will move on with Out of the Box covering the remainder of the cost.

As for printing costs, once I get my own in house printing operation going, my costs will be very low. A "$65" Shapeways shell would only cost $10 or less. Its really amazing how much companies like Shapeways and GoEngineer inflate their prices, because the material costs, even on the highest of high end printers aren't too bad per print.  Its just the initial cost of the printer thats the tough part.