My trees were made from the 3D Tree files made by Xjiefeng on Thingiverse; however, it seems the original page I found the file on is no longer accessible. The costs we need to consider in manufacturing these five items are materials, equipment, and labor. Materials would be the resin/filament used in the various printers, equipment would be the software and printers themselves, and labor would be the time I spent on this project.

1 kg of 3D printer resin is approximately $25, although this price varies based on the type of resin, and PLA filament can range from $12-20 per spool. It is difficult to determine how much filament was used in my 5 prints, as the resin prints have traces of resin which were washed/sanded off, and cannot be included in a volume measurement. Therefore, I will estimate the cost of the resin to be approximately $12, as my pieces were all 400 mm x 300 mm, and were most likely not more than 500 grams of raw material.

The equipment is all of negligible cost, as they are all shared in the OeDK and used by hundreds of students consistently. The equipment includes the 3D printers (Prusa and Formlabs), the software (Bamboo Slicer and Preform), and the resin washer and UV curer.

In terms of labor, I would argue that this project had a small amount of labor, as the 3D printers do not require active participation after the print begins. I spent approximately 2 hours, at most, learning about the printers and software, as well as locating my print files and scaling/preparing them for printing. This would be $21.82/hr as a living wage in Texas, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, and $7.25/h,r according to the true Texas minimum wage. This would be $43.64 of labor according to the living wage, and $14.50 according to the minimum wage in Texas.

In total, this would be equal to $55.64 for materials + labor if paying a living wage, and $26.50 for materials + labor if paying Texas’s minimum wage.