Discussion
How I built a 3D printing business and ran it for 8 months
jasobake: I wish I could just start a business fixing 3d printers and helping people set up really nice plex servers with hardware transcoding, but there's this pesky mortgage...Anyway, these posts always make me think of this https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/...
wespiser_2018: I wrote this after running a small 3D printing side business for ~8 months. It worked in the sense that I got steady orders and revenue, but every part of the process required me (design, printing, assembly), so it never really scaled beyond my time.I'm interested how others think about this boundary, at what point does something go from “side project” to “business”? And how do you tell if it’s worth trying to scale vs just leaving as is?
AndrewKemendo: The biggest thing I’m confused about is where the order demand was originating“ This 3D printing business started with the help of my dog, at the time a puppy, and his desire to see my neighbor’s puppy. We (the humans) began talking, and as we ran through a conversation about dogs, the topic came to his trading card business. He’d source cards all over the internet for his daily WhatNot auctions with thousands of followers. Impressive—not only a home business doing real volume, but a lens into a world I had no idea existed.I eventually noticed he had a 3D printed card stand, and with a printer at home, I offered to make him one myself. “Great,” he said, “I can sell them.””So a guy selling playing cards started selling the things you 3D printed?Is that the business?
dvh: I recently had 3d printed part made by jlcpcb, it was 110x100x25mm resin print, 60ml for €5 plus €12 shipping. https://imgur.com/a/ctOTImN
harshdoesdev: i too wanted to purchase 5-6 3D printers and start a business - basically my version of goose farming after i leave the software dev space for the greater good of mankind :)
wespiser_2018: I would start with one printer, only print PLA, then talk to your neighbors and family about it and focus on printing things they want and use.The card stands were a lot of fun, but most of what I print now are dog toys and gifts for my niece and nephew. It's nice to roll up to a family holiday, and have something interesting and unique you can just hand out.You could get started doing that for just a couple hundred bucks and some desk space!
comrade1234: I'm in Europe and ordered some dungeons and dragons figurines from ironshieldarmy based in Poland. They print them to order, optionally do the required assembly and base layer of paint.I had the impression that they're busy full-time but I have no idea really. They have some nice designs though.I'm surprised they're completely focused on DnD though. Hopefully they have another business doing war hammer, etc. (although maybe everything in war hammer is copyrighted?)
ryanhuff: From what I gathered from the article, one of your problems is that you didn’t understand the economics before you launched, and therefore your pricing was disconnected from the true costs. Next time, try to anticipate these by breaking down the various input factors (material, machine wear, design time, desired profit margin, etc). You may get an answer that convinces you it’s not worth it before you invest time.
wespiser_2018: I way under-estimated how long it would take to actually design something. I did a cost breakdown ahead of time on printing time + materials, but at that time the designs were simple, just text.As things advanced, we had people ask for logos, and recreating them is really what took time.There is still one lever here, and that was to increase the price to make that design time actually worth it. If I had to continue, that's what I would have done, but I was still losing my weekends and my free time was just more valuable.
boothby: I've been contemplating the nature of the rat race lately. If you can do it all, and you're enjoying what you're doing, why should it scale? If it's your side business, I presume you want it to remain that way until there's enough demand for it to be your main business -- and even then I wouldn't want to scale beyond demand.
marcosdumay: > why should it scaleBecause you need your business to be big enough to pay your bills, not just theoretically net positive.I have made some designs that I thought of selling too. For something like that to work, you need thousands of customers over the time.It's ok to spend an year or two of weekends working into something that can replace some of your main income. It's really not ok to do that for something that can't.
EAtmULFO: This post reads like an invitation to one or more Trademark infringement cases.
wespiser_2018: All logos used were provided by the customer and remain their property.
ghostly_s: Lol. that's not how this works.
dylan604: Lots of places charge a separate fee for the design aspect like this. Printing prices will stay the same as the time + materials is consistent, so that's what you charge the client. However, since you're having to do the design part, that's where you come up with a different pricing scheme. I've been in multiple places that had similar concepts that kept things somewhat sane.
Novosell: This is so ai-written it is hard to take serious. You figured out the trick to making tall skinny things stable? Weight or a wide base?
wespiser_2018: I did not write this with AI.The "trick" was finding a weight that would work, which needed to be purchased for cheap and installed easily.
randlet: I assumed it was AI too"All of this happened over text—not an organized workflow system, but good enough to handle a weekend’s worth of work, one weekend at a time. For a moment, the business worked. In reality, this was the easy part."And"The logo was the Boston Celtics logo. The problem? It’s not a minimal, modern logo; it’s a detailed, hand-drawn image from 1946."have a pretty AI like cadence.edit: No shade to OP....I'm glad it's not AI, but I'm sad my default is assuming AI now :/
wespiser_2018: Thanks for the feedback!
BeetleB: Please don't change your writing style just because random humbugs on the Internet associate it with an LLM.
ButlerianJihad: It may be a compliment on cogent points combined with impeccable grammar and spelling
misthop: You made a card stand for the Boston Celtics? The Celtics own that logo, selling it is clear trademark infringement. Same is true for most (all?) of the images on the post. Just because a customer provided the image does not mean they own the the trademarks or copyrights
6510: I love the refined personality of the sour dressing guy. Would love to shake his hand and make him a salad.I see some light from a door down a narrow alley from the main shopping street, I knew this building was empty for a decade and the store front was still covered in wood planks. Curious I walk into the alley to check out what was going on.I see a guy jumping around as if dancing with the largest bouquet of flowers I have ever seen. Around him 5-7 similar giant vases with layered compositions. Each with enormous exotic flowers in the center.Woah, what is that? I asked. He looked up and said loudly this is me!I said it looked stunning and asked how long he was doing this. He said, I will only do this for 2 weeks and ill be happy when it is over! I asked, is there no money in it?He said, I charge an ungodly amount of money for these. You cant buy anything like it anywhere.Then why only 2 weeks? I'm not going to trap myself! 2 weeks, a vacation, then ill do something else entirely.While talking his hands moved at lightning speed adding and removing different flowers.He ended the conversation with: I have to get these finished then I have to deliver them as fast as possible as fresh as possible. I didn't sleep for days! Cant wait for it to be over!My slacker life style allowed me to think about this strange encounter for a few days. I decided he was still doing it wrong but it looked absolutely beautiful. I'm happy he doesn't get it.
bdcravens: If you want to scratch the itch, you could fix up broken 3d printers to donate to schools.
bdcravens: I have a small side business selling 3d prints, creeping up on 2 years old. It's roughly break even, but that's mainly because I rented a space for a studio to do the work in. I mainly sell others' models (either open licensed, or commercially licensed, and intentionally steering clear of others' IP). Slowly I'm building out additional automations to facilitate scaling, but I'm really in no rush. (Day job is great)
dylan604: If it was a business, why would it not help with that pesky mortgage?
Our_Benefactors: Not enough business, not highly paid enough. No true market for such a service.
dylan604: Then that's not a business, that's a tax write off.
ghaff: And it's not even a tax write-off until you have enough income to offset expenses. (Which is nice as far as it goes but is small scale where you can write-off a few $K in expenses against a few $K in income.)
