10 ms·

I built a 3D printing business and ran it for 8 months

144 points by wespiser_2018 6mo ago

wespiser_2018 6mo ago
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 6mo ago
  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?
  - wespiser_2018 6mo ago
    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.
    - AndrewKemendo 6mo ago
      Thanks, that’s definitely a business, I just had to kind of infer it and that’s why I asked
- boothby 6mo ago
  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.
  - wespiser_2018 6mo ago
    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.
  - marcosdumay 6mo ago
    > 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.
    - boothby 6mo ago
      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.
      - marcosdumay 6mo ago
- NordStreamYacht 6mo ago
  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.
  - stevage 6mo ago
    A one person business is still a business.
- WalterBright 6mo ago
  > 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.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    >If you can make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than the business, I'd try something else If you can make the same or slightly less money way more leisurly and with way less demands on you than working a McDonalds, it's still a fine lifestyle for many.
- herbst 6mo ago
  I went from side project to business so often that I don't make any difference there anymore. However 3D printing is doomed to stay a hobby for me at this point in time with zero revenue (other than free maker points and therefore new printers, woohoo) Thing is as many pointed out it's either to expensive compared to molding, simply the wrong choice of material or to labor intensive to actually turn a profit.
harshdoesdev 6mo ago
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 6mo ago
  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!
- dekhn 6mo ago
  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.
jasobake 6mo ago
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/is_adulting_a_endless_loop_of_doing_the_same/jn57mk9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/...
- dylan604 6mo ago
  If it was a business, why would it not help with that pesky mortgage?
  - Our_Benefactors 6mo ago
    Not enough business, not highly paid enough. No true market for such a service.
    - dylan604 6mo ago
      Then that's not a business, that's a tax write off.
      - ghaff 6mo ago
        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 $K in income.)
        dylan604 6mo ago
        Coming at it from a different angle If there's already income paying the pesky mortgage, you start up an official business as a side hustle. As long as you are showing income even if at a loss, you then get to use that loss as a deduction. If it never pans out to be profitable to the point the tax man strongly suggests the business should close, you close it. In the mean time, you've followed a passion, that even as a loss, still gives financial benefit helping with the pesky mortgage.
mym1990 6mo ago
"On the economics, things worked." I would argue that they didn't. 25$ 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.
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  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.
Novosell 6mo ago
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 6mo ago
  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 6mo ago
    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 6mo ago
      Thanks for the feedback!
      - BeetleB 6mo ago
        Please don't change your writing style just because random humbugs on the Internet associate it with an LLM.
        ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
        It may be a compliment on cogent points combined with impeccable grammar and spelling
        lozenge 6mo ago
        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.
comrade1234 6mo ago
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?)
- starkparker 6mo ago
  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-the-power-of-the-copyright-claims-board/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2024/01/24/printed-minis-and... https://freelancerpress.com/arts/2025/06/04/games-workshop-issues-warhammer-creators/ https://freelancerpress.com/arts/2025/06/04/games-workshop-i...
  - hamdingers 6mo ago
    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.
    - seanw444 6mo ago
      That's... insane
      - pjc50 6mo ago
        Bartenders will also kick you out if you bring your own booze to a bar.
- giarc 6mo ago
  >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.
dvh 6mo ago
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 https://imgur.com/a/ctOTImN
- proee 6mo ago
  How long did it take to get shipped to you, from click -> doorstep?
  - dvh 6mo ago
    2 weeks (that's their cheapest shipping)
- kennywinker 6mo ago
  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.
EAtmULFO 6mo ago
This post reads like an invitation to one or more Trademark infringement cases.
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  All logos used were provided by the customer and remain their property.
  - misthop 6mo ago
    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
  - ghostly_s 6mo ago
    Lol. that's not how this works.
  - tracerbulletx 6mo ago
    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.
  - bobsmooth 6mo ago
    Yeah no that's definitely copyright infringement.
- zephen 6mo ago
  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.
  - 6mo ago
ryanhuff 6mo ago
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 6mo ago
  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.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    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.
  - ezconnect 6mo ago
    You can use AI now to design the STL files for printing.
    - wespiser_2018 6mo ago
      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.
mauvehaus 6mo ago
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.
Aurornis 6mo ago
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.
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  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.
bdcravens 6mo ago
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)
jacquesm 6mo ago
- 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.
- mandeepj 6mo ago
  well, there's that, and there's this https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ecommerce-business-with-3d-printers-2025-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ec...
  - yapyap 6mo ago
    that single succes story doesnt impact this situation though
  - jacquesm 6mo ago
    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).
    - chopin 6mo ago
      Internal structures often require support. This makes postprocessing necessary which kills your margin or makes the part expensive.
  - fainpul 6mo ago
    What the fuck is this? What even is a can holder for?
renewiltord 6mo ago
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.
shermantanktop 6mo ago
> 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.
- dnnddidiej 6mo ago
  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.
  - wespiser_2018 6mo ago
    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!
ivraatiems 6mo ago
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.
- leptons 6mo ago
  What do you pay yourself per hour for "refurbishing", and does that include repair or you buy already working old equipment and just clean it up?
  - ivraatiems 6mo ago
    I don't -- that's why it's a hobby. If I had to earn a salary from this, it wouldn't be viable. Most of my machines come with at least some defects. Some are ready to go in a few minutes, some take several hours or days. I mainly do it because I enjoy it. I try to not lose money on parts or other inputs, besides my time.
- Lord_Zero 6mo ago
  Where do you find broken laptops that can be fixed easily and cheaply?
fgfarben 6mo ago
[dead]
pavel_lishin 6mo ago
I have a 3D printer, and I've definitely seen people at local art fairs & such selling 3D printed stuff. It all looks ... well, it all looks sort of cheap. Unless you're printing at incredibly high quality, you can always tell that it was 3D printed, and half the people selling things don't even bother to do much clean up of the print after the fact - a little sanding would go a long way, but they don't bother. It ends up just being cheap plastic trinkets that I wouldn't buy even if I didn't have a 3D printer of my own. Just something to watch out for, should anyone here be inspired; you might think your print looks good, but you need to run it by someone who's willing to tell you to your face that it looks crap.
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  This is an underrated criticism: plastics get filtered out in certain aesthetic environments: you can't really have a well decorated room with 3D printed parts. Not everyone decorates with plastic, and I've been told this several times by friends and family who were getting printed gifts. For most 3D printing, there are a couple ways around this: sanding + painting like you mentioned, then also sanding + casting into resin or metal. For a topomap project, I experimented with acetone smoothing, but ultimately used "adaptive" layer lines that made the layers hard to see. Another "print only" option is fuzzy skin, which does a lot to obscure the shiny plastic trinket look. All of these options take extra work, though. With the card stands, the plastic aesthetic was less of a concern, since it was a vehicle for a vendor to get their logo in every picture/video of trading cards they took for cliens. The two things that helped me make the stands feel less cheap where using plastic with a matte finish (less "shiny plastic"), and adding 2oz worth of weights, so at least when you picked up the card stand it felt heavy. Where I lean in with my printing now is to focus on things that are so personalized that folks get over the plastic (topography maps from home areas, card stands with their name/logo), and then audiences that don't care: children and pets.
fennecbutt 6mo ago
Eh honestly I would always recommend someone just buy a bambu a1 mini for like 150£ and keep it around for odds and ends It's basically at the point where it's plug and play. But then again some people can't reason their way out of a paper bag. Like people who struggle to put together a computer...yes, the green colored square shaped plug goes in the green coloured square shaped socket! Wow.

144 points by wespiser_2018 6mo ago

wespiser_2018 6mo ago

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 6mo ago
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?
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  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.
  - AndrewKemendo 6mo ago
    Thanks, that’s definitely a business, I just had to kind of infer it and that’s why I asked
boothby 6mo ago
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.
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  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.
- marcosdumay 6mo ago
  > 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.
  - boothby 6mo ago
    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.
    - marcosdumay 6mo ago
NordStreamYacht 6mo ago
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.
- stevage 6mo ago
  A one person business is still a business.
WalterBright 6mo ago
> 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.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 6mo ago
  >If you can make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than the business, I'd try something else If you can make the same or slightly less money way more leisurly and with way less demands on you than working a McDonalds, it's still a fine lifestyle for many.
herbst 6mo ago
I went from side project to business so often that I don't make any difference there anymore. However 3D printing is doomed to stay a hobby for me at this point in time with zero revenue (other than free maker points and therefore new printers, woohoo) Thing is as many pointed out it's either to expensive compared to molding, simply the wrong choice of material or to labor intensive to actually turn a profit.

harshdoesdev 6mo ago

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 6mo ago
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!
dekhn 6mo ago
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.

jasobake 6mo ago

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/is_adulting_a_endless_loop_of_doing_the_same/jn57mk9/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/...

dylan604 6mo ago
If it was a business, why would it not help with that pesky mortgage?
- Our_Benefactors 6mo ago
  Not enough business, not highly paid enough. No true market for such a service.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    Then that's not a business, that's a tax write off.
    - ghaff 6mo ago
      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.)
      - dylan604 6mo ago
        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.

mym1990 6mo ago

"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.

wespiser_2018 6mo ago
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.

Novosell 6mo ago

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 6mo ago
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 6mo ago
  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 6mo ago
    Thanks for the feedback!
    - BeetleB 6mo ago
      Please don't change your writing style just because random humbugs on the Internet associate it with an LLM.
      - ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
        It may be a compliment on cogent points combined with impeccable grammar and spelling
      - lozenge 6mo ago
        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.

comrade1234 6mo ago

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?)

starkparker 6mo ago
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-the-power-of-the-copyright-claims-board/ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2024/01/24/printed-minis-and... https://freelancerpress.com/arts/2025/06/04/games-workshop-issues-warhammer-creators/ https://freelancerpress.com/arts/2025/06/04/games-workshop-i...
- hamdingers 6mo ago
  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.
  - seanw444 6mo ago
    That's... insane
    - pjc50 6mo ago
      Bartenders will also kick you out if you bring your own booze to a bar.
giarc 6mo ago
>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.

dvh 6mo ago

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 https://imgur.com/a/ctOTImN

proee 6mo ago
How long did it take to get shipped to you, from click -> doorstep?
- dvh 6mo ago
  2 weeks (that's their cheapest shipping)
kennywinker 6mo ago
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.

EAtmULFO 6mo ago

This post reads like an invitation to one or more Trademark infringement cases.

wespiser_2018 6mo ago
All logos used were provided by the customer and remain their property.
- misthop 6mo ago
  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
- ghostly_s 6mo ago
  Lol. that's not how this works.
- tracerbulletx 6mo ago
  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.
- bobsmooth 6mo ago
  Yeah no that's definitely copyright infringement.
zephen 6mo ago
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.
- 6mo ago

ryanhuff 6mo ago

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 6mo ago
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.
- dylan604 6mo ago
  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.
- ezconnect 6mo ago
  You can use AI now to design the STL files for printing.
  - wespiser_2018 6mo ago
    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.

mauvehaus 6mo ago

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.

Aurornis 6mo ago

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.

wespiser_2018 6mo ago
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.

bdcravens 6mo ago

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)

jacquesm 6mo ago

- 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.

mandeepj 6mo ago
well, there's that, and there's this https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ecommerce-business-with-3d-printers-2025-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ec...
- yapyap 6mo ago
  that single succes story doesnt impact this situation though
- jacquesm 6mo ago
  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).
  - chopin 6mo ago
    Internal structures often require support. This makes postprocessing necessary which kills your margin or makes the part expensive.
- fainpul 6mo ago
  What the fuck is this? What even is a can holder for?

renewiltord 6mo ago

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.

shermantanktop 6mo ago

> 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.

dnnddidiej 6mo ago
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.
- wespiser_2018 6mo ago
  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!

ivraatiems 6mo ago

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.

leptons 6mo ago
What do you pay yourself per hour for "refurbishing", and does that include repair or you buy already working old equipment and just clean it up?
- ivraatiems 6mo ago
  I don't -- that's why it's a hobby. If I had to earn a salary from this, it wouldn't be viable. Most of my machines come with at least some defects. Some are ready to go in a few minutes, some take several hours or days. I mainly do it because I enjoy it. I try to not lose money on parts or other inputs, besides my time.
Lord_Zero 6mo ago
Where do you find broken laptops that can be fixed easily and cheaply?

fgfarben 6mo ago

[dead]

pavel_lishin 6mo ago

I have a 3D printer, and I've definitely seen people at local art fairs & such selling 3D printed stuff. It all looks ... well, it all looks sort of cheap. Unless you're printing at incredibly high quality, you can always tell that it was 3D printed, and half the people selling things don't even bother to do much clean up of the print after the fact - a little sanding would go a long way, but they don't bother. It ends up just being cheap plastic trinkets that I wouldn't buy even if I didn't have a 3D printer of my own. Just something to watch out for, should anyone here be inspired; you might think your print looks good, but you need to run it by someone who's willing to tell you to your face that it looks crap.

wespiser_2018 6mo ago
This is an underrated criticism: plastics get filtered out in certain aesthetic environments: you can't really have a well decorated room with 3D printed parts. Not everyone decorates with plastic, and I've been told this several times by friends and family who were getting printed gifts. For most 3D printing, there are a couple ways around this: sanding + painting like you mentioned, then also sanding + casting into resin or metal. For a topomap project, I experimented with acetone smoothing, but ultimately used "adaptive" layer lines that made the layers hard to see. Another "print only" option is fuzzy skin, which does a lot to obscure the shiny plastic trinket look. All of these options take extra work, though. With the card stands, the plastic aesthetic was less of a concern, since it was a vehicle for a vendor to get their logo in every picture/video of trading cards they took for cliens. The two things that helped me make the stands feel less cheap where using plastic with a matte finish (less "shiny plastic"), and adding 2oz worth of weights, so at least when you picked up the card stand it felt heavy. Where I lean in with my printing now is to focus on things that are so personalized that folks get over the plastic (topography maps from home areas, card stands with their name/logo), and then audiences that don't care: children and pets.

fennecbutt 6mo ago

Eh honestly I would always recommend someone just buy a bambu a1 mini for like 150£ and keep it around for odds and ends It's basically at the point where it's plug and play. But then again some people can't reason their way out of a paper bag. Like people who struggle to put together a computer...yes, the green colored square shaped plug goes in the green coloured square shaped socket! Wow.