Let’s shape IAMF!

An enriching discussion happened on the IAMF group last week. (More details about IAMF here. to join, send us an email).

This post has four sections, all for acting on the same.

Section 1: About FFF 3D printing services

We started with an idea to demystify the pricing and other factors for FFF 3D printing services, by way of sharing data with each other anonymously.

Industry members shared the following pain-points:

1. There is no guideline on 3D print services pricing for the Indian AM industry.
2. There are service providers who charge very low prices of services, based on low input costs of machines and materials. They don’t factor in their own rightful salaries and other unknowns due to lack of experience, and it hurts their longevity as well as customer’s trust.
3. There are service providers who use premium machines and materials, and face the problem to justifying the prices to new/naive customers.
4. There is no measure of the quality of output from a service provider, and end customer is left baffled due to huge variations in pricing and quality, and is left with a bad general opinion of the industry.
5. The industry should agree on uniform prices, so that we don’t cannibalize each other and land the customer with unjustified and unsustainable benefits.
6. We should have a mechanism to not enter a price war.

The following points were suggested on the poll form in particular:

1. All parameters of FFF 3D printing (viz layer height, infill, materials etc) which influence pricing must be collected in responses.
2. How are members handling urgent print orders? Do they charge higher? We are curious to know.
3. What about post-processing efforts? FFF prints have to be post processed, and it is a significant cost. Insights are needed.
4. Which Industries form our major clientele?

Action items that were suggested

1. We form a guideline for pricing.
2. We develop some mechanism of quality assessment of 3D prints.

To proceed, we need to create clarity on some basics. Should IAMF work towards creating guidelines and quality assessment framework? We don’t know yet, but let’s vote. You will find a question in the google form.

But at this stage, we’re really just getting ahead of ourselves. We have not gathered any data yet. So, right now we gather the data. That will guide us clearly. Hence, the current form doesn’t carry any questions for next stages. Just the basics to start with!

Section 2: About B2B pricing on the group

It was noted by members that Companies share high prices with each other on the IAMF group. In many cases, the same companies are selling the same products cheaper on Amazon. Members expect, in the least, that the Amazon’s marketplace commission should be discounted while quoting prices. At the moment, members fail to build healthy B2B relations.

This point is noted here mainly for the sake of recording for future reference. Currently there is no action item. However it is apt to note some points from IAMF’s standpoint:

• It is not in the mandate of IAMF to influence members interactions of this nature. It exists only to empower direct communication among the users.
• We may work to understand the problem first, and then take the step.

There might be an interesting question coming up from this though; Does the WhatsApp group feel like an “open market” to members, and hence they are not taking the risk of sharing prices with margins stripped off? do we need to increase the “business-worthy” trust or exclusivity for IAMF?

Even more importantly, do you think is this really a problem? Should we try to address this at all? There is a question in the poll. Please answer that to guide the committee.

Section 3: Creating a directory of gray-shaded employees

This was an interesting, albeit orthogonal thing that came up.

A member called to inform that certain few of their employees have hurt his organization in a non-trivial way, and they are considering legal action on the people. And that will it be beneficial for peers to know if the same employees join their organization, and repeat the same story at the new place.

Prima facie, “why not?!” Indian 3D printing industry is a small place, and the major who’s whos are here among us. The manpower is also precious little, and we train and trust our employees in a major way. Before hiring people, we anyway do the background checks. This directory can be one more place to check, created by one of our own, before we start investing in a person.

On the flip side, a gentleman of an employee might be permanently jinxed for the future, maybe for some minor mistake, based purely on the personal opinion of their employer. Word-of-mouth is a notorious thing, and the negative one tends to propagate on face value, without fact-checking.

Either way, you will find a question in the poll, if IAMF should do this or not. Please participate.

Section 4: Creating a searchable web-forum based on WhatsApp posts

We keep doing discussions like this on the group:

“Hello, does anyone here do CAD modelling from photos?”

“Sure, we can help. Please DM.”

Or,

“How does the layer height affect the weight of an SLA print”.

followed by “… a long and knowledgeable reply from a veteran member”

And we are losing priceless information on a daily basis, by not archiving it. If we create searchable archives for all discussions ever done on our WhatsApp group, we will have a wealth of information for our ready reference. And it will only increase by the day.

Con — It is an involved and continuous work, and not a small one at that. The past archives are huge. Your corporate membership payments will immediately become important for the committee to pull this through.

Again, is this important enough to take up? There is a question on the poll. Please respond.

Thanks for reading this far! Now for the most important part:

Do participate! Don’t be a bystander. IAMF is a totally neutral and 100% democratic space. IAMF exists to enable healthy discussion and information sharing which makes members’ businesses better, and its policies will always be formed objectively and based on data. Please participate, and impact the rest of us by your outlook.

If you are a big company, your participation is all the more important. The data points for a mature business are guiding lights for young companies. 3D printing is here, and percolating the nation’s fabric by the minute. Everyone is playing their part. Please help new companies avoid mistakes, by giving them your mature inputs.

A note on privacy: The form is not collecting email addresses, so you are anonymous by design.

If you allow us to identify yourself, please fill in the company name. Your identity will still be anonymized before sharing, eg “a veteran company in pune charges a minimum of Rs. 1000 for their FDM orders”.

So, on an ending note to this section, please ensure the following while filling the form:

1. Your participation
2. Accuracy of data
3. Please understand the question clearly before answering. You will find explanation in the questions for help.

For Indian Additive Manufacturing Forum,

Aakash