3DPrinting

Your Thingiverse only has two over year old designs? How serious are you?

Yea, I am net positive with my 3d printing, that includes buying another printer. You have to remember that the raw material the 3d printers use is relatively cheap. I can print off something that costs me less than $1 per part, not including labor, electricity, etc, and still charge multiple times what it cost me to make. #d printing is basically a money making machine if you find the right niche and are decent at design.

Im making the filament vendors money does that count?

I made about $100 in revenue, but very little profit off that, by making some simple cookie cutters for kids to use with play dough. Couldn’t charge enough for them to really make any money for how long they took to print.

Still trying to think of how to make it a more profitable little side business, but short of hitting it gold with being able to think of and design my own product that even a decent sized niche of people would want, it’s not looking great. Was going to buy that new multi-colour fast Bambu printer so I could sell some MatMire designs (subscribed to his patreon) as they are amazing in 1 colour so would be an easy sell in multicolour, but the wastage of material in multicolour prints threw me off.

I print FDM. I've paid for the printers and make a little money each month. Not enough to live on but enough to finance the hobby.

My mom hooked me up with a teacher who wanted a watercolor insert for altoid tins. The lady was enthusiastic and would pay me every year to make them for all her classes. The design she pointed me to was a BSD license but I remade it anyway. I'd make like 100 prints at $5 each. Made like $500 X 4 years.

I haven't heard from her for two years. I don't know if she still teaching or found another printer.

I make some photographay related devices and give them away on printables/thingverse. For the most popular designs I mention that they are for sale on etsy. I know there are a lot of people interested in the things but without a 3d printer. I'm also not shy on mentioning my designs on social media if they are a solution to that person's photographic problem. On etsy I don't mention thingiverse/printables except for one disability related item. The etsy sales are about $120 a month.

I make a small amount of money selling my original designs as prints on etsy. It's not a lot, but thats how i want it so that it's manageable with my single printer. My goal is to get the etsy gig just big enough to 100% pay for this hobby.