I run a similar "hobby business" - at least that's what I call it. I've posted about it before on here; I refurbish and resell old electronics, mostly laptop computers.
As of today, I've sold more than 800 machines at an average of $80 per machine and an average profit of $30 (approximately). That's around $24,000 of profit over the last three years or so. It covers all the costs of its own inventory, parts, losses (e. g. some machines just never make it to sale), and it's built a lot of fun community relationships. Plus, I've helped a lot of people get access to a working computer at a low cost!
This would never, ever scale beyond me doing it. The moment I had to employ a person, pay rent on a space, or start offering warranties and free returns and so on, that profit margin would vanish. That's why it's a hobby, not a full-time job. I do it on nights, weekends, and in between working my day job (e. g. I'll have a Windows install going in the background while I code).
But it's fun, it's valuable, I've learned a lot about running a business, and it's paid my car payment a few times. It's also nice to have a 'job' that is very different from my day job: much more hands on, not as much complex thinking required, and more immediately rewarding. (At least for me. I just love when a broken thing starts to work again.) The hardest part is the customers, especially when things don't go well (e. g. are my fault) or they are in a bad mood.
I think more people should do things like this. It doesn't have to be the thing that gives you the money you live on to be valuable.
This tells the whole story... these numbers are so far off from what they should be that this is not a business, but a charity cosplaying as a business. It's a pity you are going to drop this, I think if you adjust your pricing and become a bit more efficient you can easily make it work. But great you're sharing your numbers, you really just need better customers.
Rules of thumb: 10x on materials, base fee of $3 / hour of print time, $100 / hour design time if < 1000 parts, above that you can start pricing it into the job total.
1. It was never a business for the reasons you brought up
2. The appeal seems to depend heavily on trademark infringement that would make it even less of a viable business long-term
3. I hate to be mean to OP but the print quality of these products look pretty darn low and undesirable. And yes, I do realize the Celtics photo was an example of a "before" result.
So much of the article talks about the printer breaking down and clogging all the time and it sounds like the author's got some really bad equipment or is otherwise doing something wrong here. 50 orders and 3000 hours of runtime doesn't usually get you busted motors and a major need to have spare parts on hand like the article describes.
Well at a minimum it bought him a new printer so it’s not all wasted. And if the $3352 represents mostly fixed upfront costs, the issue is revenue imo.
> Expanding your plastic filament palette requires upfront investment
Just a guess, but the number includes buying an entire 3D printer which you don’t have to keep doing.
I would amortize it over 5 years. Plus maintenance cost for replacement parts. After 5 it may still work but your competitors upgraded and so must you.
This guy only made 50 sales and 3000 hours of print time. I'm actually somewhat confused at how they need to keep replacement parts stocked up for that kind of low runtime.
This is either a bad choice of printer, some kind of user error, or supreme bad luck.
I don't even know how to get a clog printing with PLA.
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?
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.
I agree, and a big practical reason I walked away was that I was spending my weekends and nights doing this, and there were other hobbies/interests I wanted to pursue. After so many order, it was also getting pretty boring to print the same thing out, over and over, but I could have always raised prices and decreased order that way.
I'm still 3D printing, but now focused on problems like dog and kids toys where I can give away the results.
Because 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.
It sounds like you're wanting the the side-project to take over and replace your day job. Which is fine, but different from what I've been picturing for myself. Nevertheless, with that being your target: suppose you've grown big enough to pay the bills. Does the business still need to scale?
I see that as a bit of a trap, because people pass on what (to me) seems to be fulfilling work that could support a modest lifestyle and make big-growth choices that either crash them out or saddle their business with debt its market can't sustain.
If the whole point of starting your own business is because you want to get out of the ‘rat race’, doesn’t it need to at least pay your bills? Otherwise, you are still in the rat race, just with even less time.
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?
Yes, exactly. It was through a neighbor. He had a functioning trading card business to start with, I sold my first order to him, then his clients started asking for prints.
I'd argue that's a "business", there were sales, supplies, a bottom line, et cetera, it's just the front-end part of the business was in collaboration with someone else.
It was pretty random, but there's all sorts of other 3D printing businesses like this for D&D supplies, tool attachments, et cetera.
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.
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.
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.
This business ran from summer '24 to late winter '25. I looked at the time for AI generation tools, but things were pretty hacky then, and the general card stand shape had a lot of features built into it for better printing and assembly. I spent an weekend trying to do 2d to 3d on a pic of my Greyhound, and never got a 3d image that didn't have a glaring problem with it.
The one real optimization here, would be a tool that converts a logo into a multi-color print. There are some solutions like HugeForge that use height maps, or hacks you can do with an svg to convert it to an STL (shape) file, but I never found one that works. As with all this generation stuff, the killer is really the details: if things don't look good and you don't have an easy way to edit it, it's never going to work for the customer. Tracing is also just one step in the process, you still have to position it on the card stand and set up the multi-color print. That said, for complex logos, SVG -> STL might make sense.
I'm convinced I could vibe code something over the weekend that takes a logo, maps it to a set of colors using some sort of segmentation, then export that as a series of STL files that can be imported into Bambu Studio (or orca slicer) and then mapped on to a card stand.
If someone is looking for a project, an end to end "make a coffee table coaster from an image" would be a great web tool (or even CLI). Especially if you could enter the number of colors (or colors you have), modify the generated traces, and and export as a single 3MF file you can import into your slicer. That's complicated, but probably do-able in a few days.
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...
No one would pay to have a 3D printer fixed. Or at least not pay enough for it to be a viable business. A brand new printer can be purchased for the equivalent of a couple hours labor, and that’s before replacement parts.
This is the problem (or arguably success) of modern appliances in general. They just aren’t generally worth repairing.
People grumble about planned obsolescence but the reality is that there are people who will repair them, if you are willing to pay. But when repairs cost a significant chunk of the price of a new appliance, most people opt to replace.
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.)
If there's already income paying the pesky mortgage, you start up an official business as a side hustle. As long as you are showing income even if at a loss, you then get to use that loss as a deduction. If it never pans out to be profitable to the point the tax man strongly suggests the business should close, you close it. In the mean time, you've followed a passion, that even as a loss, still gives financial benefit helping with the pesky mortgage.
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.
Howdy from a former Somervillen (inferred from the photos)!
If you have any interest in doing custom B2C instead of B2B, there's Somerville Open Studios. I did that one year (2019) before we moved to Vermont just before things went to shit in 2020. I also noted that Somerville Open Container Day (aka Porchfest) would be a great time to have something going (a demo maybe?) at our house given the huge foot traffic. I think you'd get a lot more folks passing by rather than the folks already committed to visiting art and craft studios specifically.
Don't let your likely lousy space be a barrier. We had my furniture on display in our living room (aka: our furniture) and I gave people tours of our basement which had my bench, my table saw, and damn little else. People kind of dig it. Small and scrappy is kind of expected for these kind of events.
Good luck if you try to give a go at it from another angle! And if you stick with software, that's cool too.
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
For sports teams licensing their branding is an important business and they protect it fiercely. They regularly take legal action against small print shops, and even bars just for using the term superbowl to promote events.
I don't think you are making the point you think you are. Youtube confirms to copyright law because they got big enough to notice. Uber is regulated because they got big enough to notice.
> Uber is regulated because they got big enough to notice.
Nobody in their right mind thinks that Uber suffers under the same level of restriction as taxi drivers historically did.
> because they got big enough to notice.
Nobody who paid attention to the shameful RIAA shenanigans a couple of decades ago can possibly believe that "big enough to notice" was anything more than sharing one song.
Sure, you can share with your friends all you want now, because all the songs are freely available due to an uneasy truce, but the default posture of IP lawyers is to sue them all now, and sort them out later.
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)
I enjoyed this writeup. It was interesting to read the perspective of someone starting a 3D printing business without first researching all of the countless 3D printing businesses and trying to duplicate their work. They discovered why doing custom designs and low volume orders doesn't work, but it was more interesting than reading yet another 3D print farm story.
The current meta is to license (or steal) 3D toy models and then market them relentlessly on social media. It's a marketing and social media game most of all. These shops have tens of printers set up in a room printing plates full of little toys, a web shop or social media shop to pick colors, and then they spend their days monitoring printers and packing up orders. There's not much 3D printing or design fun in the job because it's mostly a social media and logistics operation.
I have just about no interest in pumping out flexi-dragons, although I do have a tupperware container full of them to give to house guests and family.
The 3D printing businesses I admire are all folks who are incredibly good designers making fun and unique products that they sell it before it's ripped off. That, plus some social media content to drive organic content can work, but it would take me years of design work to get there.
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 :)
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!
I've got enough equipment and skills already to run an etsy shop when I retire, but looking at the economics, I concluded that it would just turn an enjoyable hobby into a chore, and I didn't want to do that.
I get it, you already had a job. And this sounds like a job with a fragile profit margin, so not as good as your main job. But still, discovering a way to trade your work for money is a good thing.
There's a couple YT creators I really like, one of them makes incredible products and sells them from the design side, the other one is running an large and automated print farm.
Two different angles on the problem, but both are using YT for at least some of their distribution problem. I'm not a big fan of 20 printers + flex-dragons sold on social media, since it feels like a low-skill hustle, but adding content creation seems like it could work. Thanks for pointing that out!
I would argue that they didn't. 25$ per hour for custom design work seems very low, I understand maybe trying to get a customer base but at that rate you are just going to get repeat customers who want the same low cost labor. Where 3d printing is great is if you can create truly custom things, not knick knacks that can be copied and mass produced by someone else. Selling the plastic itself is a no go, you have to go mixed materials, mixed colorways, things that take time to assemble, and then charge out the wazoo for custom work because the people that really want the custom stuff, will find a way to pay for it.
That's the same conclusion I ran into, and why I stopped. $25/hour could probably be increased, but my market was really niche: people selling trading cards via online auctions who wanted custom branded card stands.
In terms of plastic, yes, it does come across as lower value, but if you can put someones logo on it you can make something unique that they love.
For resin printing, doing it yourself almost never makes sense. It’s expensive, fiddly, messy, hazardous to your skin and lungs, and consumes a lot of space to do right.
Filament printing, on the other hand, makes sense to do yourself quite often. A $200 printer will do an excellent job of most things you can throw at it, it doesn’t take up much space, is quite safe unless you’re using weird filaments, and even a kid can learn the basics in a couple days.
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?)
>I'm surprised they're completely focused on DnD though
They could have 20 sites all dedicated to a single theme. Probably best for SEO and customer satisfaction if your site is dedicated rather than a hodge podge of different themes.
Warhammer IP is a fucking nightmare. They will bring all kinds of hammers down on anyone trying to make money on anything Warhammer-compatible or resembling Warhammer.
Examples of what they pull when someone tries to do that:
I think you have a business here in this space if you focus exclusively on bomb drones and scaling production to 1000s of units per month with near 100% duty cycle.
"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 :/
Many editing tools support double or triple hyphen that convert automatically to em dashes. On Android it's trivial to write an em dash (easier than say the percent symbol).
I even have a plug-in that converts some hyphens to em dashes on my blog.
Rendering judgment on someone who published something on their own site without knowing their stack reflects more on you than him.
I run a similar "hobby business" - at least that's what I call it. I've posted about it before on here; I refurbish and resell old electronics, mostly laptop computers.
As of today, I've sold more than 800 machines at an average of $80 per machine and an average profit of $30 (approximately). That's around $24,000 of profit over the last three years or so. It covers all the costs of its own inventory, parts, losses (e. g. some machines just never make it to sale), and it's built a lot of fun community relationships. Plus, I've helped a lot of people get access to a working computer at a low cost!
This would never, ever scale beyond me doing it. The moment I had to employ a person, pay rent on a space, or start offering warranties and free returns and so on, that profit margin would vanish. That's why it's a hobby, not a full-time job. I do it on nights, weekends, and in between working my day job (e. g. I'll have a Windows install going in the background while I code).
But it's fun, it's valuable, I've learned a lot about running a business, and it's paid my car payment a few times. It's also nice to have a 'job' that is very different from my day job: much more hands on, not as much complex thinking required, and more immediately rewarding. (At least for me. I just love when a broken thing starts to work again.) The hardest part is the customers, especially when things don't go well (e. g. are my fault) or they are in a bad mood.
I think more people should do things like this. It doesn't have to be the thing that gives you the money you live on to be valuable.
- design time earned about $25/hour
- $3666 total revenue
- $3352 in expenses
- ~50 orders fulfilled
- ~3000 hours of logged print time.
This tells the whole story... these numbers are so far off from what they should be that this is not a business, but a charity cosplaying as a business. It's a pity you are going to drop this, I think if you adjust your pricing and become a bit more efficient you can easily make it work. But great you're sharing your numbers, you really just need better customers.
Rules of thumb: 10x on materials, base fee of $3 / hour of print time, $100 / hour design time if < 1000 parts, above that you can start pricing it into the job total.
well, there's that, and there's this https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ec...
Yes, and that's precisely why that one works, he's got the numbers figured out.
Still, six figure income, but what is the margin?
Looks very good though. And: very, very hard to injection mold that product (internal structure is something 3D printers excel at).
that single succes story doesnt impact this situation though
No, it's not a pity, OP should drop this.
1. It was never a business for the reasons you brought up
2. The appeal seems to depend heavily on trademark infringement that would make it even less of a viable business long-term
3. I hate to be mean to OP but the print quality of these products look pretty darn low and undesirable. And yes, I do realize the Celtics photo was an example of a "before" result.
So much of the article talks about the printer breaking down and clogging all the time and it sounds like the author's got some really bad equipment or is otherwise doing something wrong here. 50 orders and 3000 hours of runtime doesn't usually get you busted motors and a major need to have spare parts on hand like the article describes.
Well at a minimum it bought him a new printer so it’s not all wasted. And if the $3352 represents mostly fixed upfront costs, the issue is revenue imo.
> Expanding your plastic filament palette requires upfront investment
Just a guess, but the number includes buying an entire 3D printer which you don’t have to keep doing.
They do wear out...
I would amortize it over 5 years. Plus maintenance cost for replacement parts. After 5 it may still work but your competitors upgraded and so must you.
This guy only made 50 sales and 3000 hours of print time. I'm actually somewhat confused at how they need to keep replacement parts stocked up for that kind of low runtime.
This is either a bad choice of printer, some kind of user error, or supreme bad luck.
I don't even know how to get a clog printing with PLA.
It is PMF discovery. It is a survey cosplaying as a business :)
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?
Unless you can turn the process into something you can delegate to an employee or set of employees it will not scale up to be a business.
Anything gated by the founder's personal availability is what the VCs used to call (dismissively) a lifestyle business.
> at what point does something go from “side project” to “business”?
When you get serious about making a substantial profit.
> And how do you tell if it’s worth trying to scale vs just leaving as is?
If you can make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than the business, I'd try something else.
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.
I agree, and a big practical reason I walked away was that I was spending my weekends and nights doing this, and there were other hobbies/interests I wanted to pursue. After so many order, it was also getting pretty boring to print the same thing out, over and over, but I could have always raised prices and decreased order that way.
I'm still 3D printing, but now focused on problems like dog and kids toys where I can give away the results.
> why should it scale
Because 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.
It sounds like you're wanting the the side-project to take over and replace your day job. Which is fine, but different from what I've been picturing for myself. Nevertheless, with that being your target: suppose you've grown big enough to pay the bills. Does the business still need to scale?
I see that as a bit of a trap, because people pass on what (to me) seems to be fulfilling work that could support a modest lifestyle and make big-growth choices that either crash them out or saddle their business with debt its market can't sustain.
If the whole point of starting your own business is because you want to get out of the ‘rat race’, doesn’t it need to at least pay your bills? Otherwise, you are still in the rat race, just with even less time.
Not replace, but it should free enough time to run it. There's a minimum scale for something to actually free some time.
> suppose you've grown big enough to pay the bills. Does the business still need to scale?
No, that's the acceptable size.
Why to scale? Because hours of work for $300 is not worth it lol.
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?
Yes, exactly. It was through a neighbor. He had a functioning trading card business to start with, I sold my first order to him, then his clients started asking for prints.
I'd argue that's a "business", there were sales, supplies, a bottom line, et cetera, it's just the front-end part of the business was in collaboration with someone else.
It was pretty random, but there's all sorts of other 3D printing businesses like this for D&D supplies, tool attachments, et cetera.
Thanks, that’s definitely a business, I just had to kind of infer it and that’s why I asked
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.
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.
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.
You can use AI now to design the STL files for printing.
This business ran from summer '24 to late winter '25. I looked at the time for AI generation tools, but things were pretty hacky then, and the general card stand shape had a lot of features built into it for better printing and assembly. I spent an weekend trying to do 2d to 3d on a pic of my Greyhound, and never got a 3d image that didn't have a glaring problem with it.
The one real optimization here, would be a tool that converts a logo into a multi-color print. There are some solutions like HugeForge that use height maps, or hacks you can do with an svg to convert it to an STL (shape) file, but I never found one that works. As with all this generation stuff, the killer is really the details: if things don't look good and you don't have an easy way to edit it, it's never going to work for the customer. Tracing is also just one step in the process, you still have to position it on the card stand and set up the multi-color print. That said, for complex logos, SVG -> STL might make sense.
I'm convinced I could vibe code something over the weekend that takes a logo, maps it to a set of colors using some sort of segmentation, then export that as a series of STL files that can be imported into Bambu Studio (or orca slicer) and then mapped on to a card stand.
If someone is looking for a project, an end to end "make a coffee table coaster from an image" would be a great web tool (or even CLI). Especially if you could enter the number of colors (or colors you have), modify the generated traces, and and export as a single 3MF file you can import into your slicer. That's complicated, but probably do-able in a few days.
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/...
That's quite the depressing post, but also quite pessimistic. There are lots of stories that start that way but end happily.
If it was a business, why would it not help with that pesky mortgage?
No one would pay to have a 3D printer fixed. Or at least not pay enough for it to be a viable business. A brand new printer can be purchased for the equivalent of a couple hours labor, and that’s before replacement parts.
This is the problem (or arguably success) of modern appliances in general. They just aren’t generally worth repairing.
People grumble about planned obsolescence but the reality is that there are people who will repair them, if you are willing to pay. But when repairs cost a significant chunk of the price of a new appliance, most people opt to replace.
Customers may buy a retail functional replacement now for <$400.
It is called the Shoemakers paradox, where the shoemakers kids go barefoot.
Also, the same reason why CNC Milling factories don't tend to produce paperclips. =3
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
Not enough business, not highly paid enough. No true market for such a service.
Then that's not a business, that's a tax write off.
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.)
Coming at it from a different angle
If there's already income paying the pesky mortgage, you start up an official business as a side hustle. As long as you are showing income even if at a loss, you then get to use that loss as a deduction. If it never pans out to be profitable to the point the tax man strongly suggests the business should close, you close it. In the mean time, you've followed a passion, that even as a loss, still gives financial benefit helping with the pesky mortgage.
If you want to scratch the itch, you could fix up broken 3d printers to donate to schools.
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.
Howdy from a former Somervillen (inferred from the photos)!
If you have any interest in doing custom B2C instead of B2B, there's Somerville Open Studios. I did that one year (2019) before we moved to Vermont just before things went to shit in 2020. I also noted that Somerville Open Container Day (aka Porchfest) would be a great time to have something going (a demo maybe?) at our house given the huge foot traffic. I think you'd get a lot more folks passing by rather than the folks already committed to visiting art and craft studios specifically.
Don't let your likely lousy space be a barrier. We had my furniture on display in our living room (aka: our furniture) and I gave people tours of our basement which had my bench, my table saw, and damn little else. People kind of dig it. Small and scrappy is kind of expected for these kind of events.
Good luck if you try to give a go at it from another angle! And if you stick with software, that's cool too.
This post reads like an invitation to one or more Trademark infringement cases.
All logos used were provided by the customer and remain their property.
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
For sports teams licensing their branding is an important business and they protect it fiercely. They regularly take legal action against small print shops, and even bars just for using the term superbowl to promote events.
Lol. that's not how this works.
Especially if he was going to stay relatively small.
I thought Youtube was going to be sued into oblivion.
I thought Uber was going to be regulated into oblivion.
etc.
Money obviously can overcome existing laws, but if you're not prepared for those laws, you will be in for a world of hurt.
I don't think you are making the point you think you are. Youtube confirms to copyright law because they got big enough to notice. Uber is regulated because they got big enough to notice.
It's not that simple.
Any less money or worse lawyers, and youtube would have been sued into oblivion.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/mar/14/copyright...
> Uber is regulated because they got big enough to notice.
Nobody in their right mind thinks that Uber suffers under the same level of restriction as taxi drivers historically did.
> because they got big enough to notice.
Nobody who paid attention to the shameful RIAA shenanigans a couple of decades ago can possibly believe that "big enough to notice" was anything more than sharing one song.
Sure, you can share with your friends all you want now, because all the songs are freely available due to an uneasy truce, but the default posture of IP lawyers is to sue them all now, and sort them out later.
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)
I enjoyed this writeup. It was interesting to read the perspective of someone starting a 3D printing business without first researching all of the countless 3D printing businesses and trying to duplicate their work. They discovered why doing custom designs and low volume orders doesn't work, but it was more interesting than reading yet another 3D print farm story.
The current meta is to license (or steal) 3D toy models and then market them relentlessly on social media. It's a marketing and social media game most of all. These shops have tens of printers set up in a room printing plates full of little toys, a web shop or social media shop to pick colors, and then they spend their days monitoring printers and packing up orders. There's not much 3D printing or design fun in the job because it's mostly a social media and logistics operation.
Thanks for your comment!
I have just about no interest in pumping out flexi-dragons, although I do have a tupperware container full of them to give to house guests and family.
The 3D printing businesses I admire are all folks who are incredibly good designers making fun and unique products that they sell it before it's ripped off. That, plus some social media content to drive organic content can work, but it would take me years of design work to get there.
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 :)
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!
I've got enough equipment and skills already to run an etsy shop when I retire, but looking at the economics, I concluded that it would just turn an enjoyable hobby into a chore, and I didn't want to do that.
> It’s not a scalable business, it’s a job.
Oh no!
I get it, you already had a job. And this sounds like a job with a fragile profit margin, so not as good as your main job. But still, discovering a way to trade your work for money is a good thing.
The real money comes from the YT channel. And running 20 printers churning out that one part no one has made an injection mold for yet.
There's a couple YT creators I really like, one of them makes incredible products and sells them from the design side, the other one is running an large and automated print farm.
Two different angles on the problem, but both are using YT for at least some of their distribution problem. I'm not a big fan of 20 printers + flex-dragons sold on social media, since it feels like a low-skill hustle, but adding content creation seems like it could work. Thanks for pointing that out!
"On the economics, things worked."
I would argue that they didn't. 25$ per hour for custom design work seems very low, I understand maybe trying to get a customer base but at that rate you are just going to get repeat customers who want the same low cost labor. Where 3d printing is great is if you can create truly custom things, not knick knacks that can be copied and mass produced by someone else. Selling the plastic itself is a no go, you have to go mixed materials, mixed colorways, things that take time to assemble, and then charge out the wazoo for custom work because the people that really want the custom stuff, will find a way to pay for it.
That's the same conclusion I ran into, and why I stopped. $25/hour could probably be increased, but my market was really niche: people selling trading cards via online auctions who wanted custom branded card stands.
In terms of plastic, yes, it does come across as lower value, but if you can put someones logo on it you can make something unique that they love.
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
For resin printing, doing it yourself almost never makes sense. It’s expensive, fiddly, messy, hazardous to your skin and lungs, and consumes a lot of space to do right.
Filament printing, on the other hand, makes sense to do yourself quite often. A $200 printer will do an excellent job of most things you can throw at it, it doesn’t take up much space, is quite safe unless you’re using weird filaments, and even a kid can learn the basics in a couple days.
How long did it take to get shipped to you, from click -> doorstep?
2 weeks (that's their cheapest shipping)
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?)
>I'm surprised they're completely focused on DnD though
They could have 20 sites all dedicated to a single theme. Probably best for SEO and customer satisfaction if your site is dedicated rather than a hodge podge of different themes.
Warhammer IP is a fucking nightmare. They will bring all kinds of hammers down on anyone trying to make money on anything Warhammer-compatible or resembling Warhammer.
Examples of what they pull when someone tries to do that:
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2024/01/24/printed-minis-and...
https://freelancerpress.com/arts/2025/06/04/games-workshop-i...
Games Workshop store employees will also kick you out for using 3d printed models in your army, even when it's just for casual play.
That's... insane
Bartenders will also kick you out if you bring your own booze to a bar.
I think you have a business here in this space if you focus exclusively on bomb drones and scaling production to 1000s of units per month with near 100% duty cycle.
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?
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.
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 :/
People have been writing comparative statements with punctuation for as long as we've had things to compare and written language to punctuate.
Your bot detector is broken.
Thanks for the feedback!
Please don't change your writing style just because random humbugs on the Internet associate it with an LLM.
What is writing if not a way to be perceived by others. Ideally not perceived as an LLM!
I saw it too and OP has likely picked up these idioms from the sheer amount of AI-assisted or generated writing out there.
> I saw it too and OP has likely picked up these idioms from the sheer amount of AI-assisted or generated writing out there.
I think that's a convenient post hoc justification. I could as easily say the LLM wrote it that way because that's how people actually write.
This is the home of the writing luminaries that can’t imagine outputting em-dashes by hand.
where is the em-dash key on your keyboard? Yes, I know you can use a shortcut. 99.9% of people don't.
Many editing tools support double or triple hyphen that convert automatically to em dashes. On Android it's trivial to write an em dash (easier than say the percent symbol).
I even have a plug-in that converts some hyphens to em dashes on my blog.
Rendering judgment on someone who published something on their own site without knowing their stack reflects more on you than him.
It may be a compliment on cogent points combined with impeccable grammar and spelling