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 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...
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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'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?)
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 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!
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.
"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 :/
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 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/...
If it was a business, why would it not help with that pesky mortgage?
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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
Lol. that's not how this works.
"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'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?)
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.
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 recently had 3d printed part made by jlcpcb, it was 110x100x25mm resin print, 60ml for €5 plus €12 shipping. https://imgur.com/a/ctOTImN
How long did it take to get shipped to you, from click -> doorstep?
2 weeks (that's their cheapest shipping)
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.
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 :/
Thanks for the feedback!
Please don't change your writing style just because random humbugs on the Internet associate it with an LLM.
It may be a compliment on cogent points combined with impeccable grammar and spelling