5 ms·
- design time earned about $25/hour - $3666 total revenue - $3352 in expenses - ~50 orders fulfilled - ~3000 hours of logged print time. This tells the who
by 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 agowell, 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 agothat single succes story doesnt impact this situation though
- jacquesm 6mo agoYes, 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 agoInternal structures often require support. This makes postprocessing necessary which kills your margin or makes the part expensive.
- fainpul 6mo agoWhat the fuck is this? What even is a can holder for?
- ludicrousdispla 6mo agoThey're used to keep a soda or beer can insulated, typically when drinking the beverage outside during hot summer months.
- dnnddidiej 6mo agoIt is PMF discovery. It is a survey cosplaying as a business :)
- janalsncm 6mo agoWell 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.
- wakawaka28 6mo agoThey do wear out...
- dnnddidiej 6mo agoI 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.
- dangus 6mo agoThis 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.
- hypercube33 6mo agoCrappy filament and improper temps will do it and you can just 'cold pull' the clog out
- SR2Z 6mo ago3000 hours is a lot for a 3D printer, especially if you're not printing in PLA OR you are doing lots of filament swaps OR you're experimenting with different nozzles and filaments. If you load your printer with one 10kg spool of PLA, odds are good you'll go a while without issues.
- jacquesm 6mo ago
- dangus 6mo agoNo, 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.
- jacquesm 6mo agoThat's true, but that could be just his choice of printer. I've got a prusa that has done 100 km of filament (ok, it is the oldest one) and 50 bambus, the bambus are insanely reliable. Agreed that stuff shouldn't be breaking over that kind of runtime. But the article leaves out a lot of detail that would have helped identifying what is going wrong with the printers, but that's not the main reason this did not work, the main reason is a lack of business sense.
- wespiser_2018 6mo agoSomething like 98 to 99% of prints worked out. When I wrote the piece, the moments of failure shaped the process and my approach, and not representative of the average print. For the most part, my X1C + AMS set up was just plug and play, and I tried to use the Celtics print as an example of pushing that system beyond what it could do, and how struggling through that lead to specific adaptations in the process. My focus was really getting prints out the door to hit shipping windows, so delays were felt by the customer and the reputation of my partner. Just the overall production pressure, it's a different experience than most prints I do for fun, where a failure is an opportunity to learn, and there's time to try alternatives. As for the 0.2mm clog, I'm nearly certain it was an issue with the specific roll of filament I was using, Overature Matte PLA in the "forrest" green color they have. Other colors in that print worked. Usually PLA clogs are cooling issues, but optimizing the print profile would have been a big slow down.