I've built a successful print farm business and want to share the journey and learnings I've made along the way. If you love 3D printing but are not sure how to monetize it - you're in the right place! Let's turn your 3D Printing Hobby into a Business!
Etsy now reduces their fee from 6.5% to 2.5% if you are responsible for sending the customer to your Etsy store. So depending on your monthly Shopify fees of $29-299 a month, you need to sell between $1,500-$12,000 a month to start saving money.... and you lose money if you sell less than that.
Are your profit margin assumptions including the percentages you pay to sell the actual product, like the credit card fees or a site like Etsy/Ebay? Because if I'm say shooting for 50% profit, I really need to aim for 65% to offset those fees.
Mate the last thing u have to do is EXPLAIN why u charge what u charge! I bought one for my Bosch and it’s on its way. Can’t “FRIGGIN” wait😂 I am paying for ur engineering of a piece not on the market and will pay what it takes to get access to it. Forget the balloons here that whinge. U just blank their comments out 😂
I need a set formula to follow. Like right now I do 1,000÷Filiment=👍🏻 20÷👍🏻=❤️ ❤️×5=💙 Then 1.50×hours=💜 💙+💜=$$$ Obviously I don't factor in the power and whatnot but I thought that was a good equation to find cost of my prints
You also need to factor in the labour cost associated with maintenance and other machine work. You need to charge your shop rate for that. Do not compete based on price or you will always lose. Understand your costs but price based upon the value of the product. Also, the design is much more lucrative than printing as a service.
with more and more people with 3d printers that print out of the box, it doesn't make sense to have a 3D printing service, shapeway just when out of business.
This was really interesting. I used to run a custom woodworking business and having to account for all of the little costs here and there in the process of making a product was mind blowing at first. This is definitely a similar, yet simpler path. Sounds like you kind of have to be an parts engineer/inventor to run a print farm, though. Otherwise, what are you printing? Other people's designs? I think I'll definitely have to get a quality FDM printer at some point and mess around with it.
I think one important point you didn't account for is the amount of time to design and prototype the part. That research and development cost should then be applied across the parts based on the expected volume to sell them. For example if you put in 100 hours to design and prototype a part and you expect to sell a thousand of those items over the course of a year, then you would apply 1/10 of an hour of cost to every part. The estimate of sales can be more accurate after you've been doing this for a while, and admittedly at the start it's going to be nothing but a wild guess.
I am using simple version of print calcualtion on my P1S - for example PLA, $33/kg. Fillament print cost + $1/hour. If a fillament in print cost $3.5, and print time is 10hours. It will cost $13.5 - $14
I want to switch from Etsy to Shopify but I stuck because everyone from my friends told me that taxes are sucks with Shopify. Could you help me to understand what to do with taxes on Shopify? How to pay it properly for Shopify per each state and how much usually it cost with apps or accountant?
No update on the other video for the Prusa input shaping. My Prusa mini with input shaping cut printing times in more than half, and on small prints it is just about as fast as my X1c (mostly because of the very short startup time compared to the X1c).
It been 2 months since I bought my first 3D printer ( XIC ). So far with some minor troubleshooting, things been good. Next year, I am thinking of maybe buying at least one P1P for simpler parts, but I am hoping Bambu lab releases a bigger printer.
We started on Etsy. It's easy, I don't have to deal with any tax stuff, and the fee isn't out of the world. I don't need the SEO, and I already have a full time job. yes, there are copy cats and people have copied and I have copied people. it's the biggest issue, but you're in a mall with same shops. people will go to the highest reviews and best costs. Works for someone doing this when they come home from work at night.
if you care about surface quality without slowing down the speed & you often print tall object, core XY is a must. I knock tall print all the time with bed slinger
Having own both, I think the A1 is just a better deal. With the AMS lite, its the same price as the P1P alone. It's also a lot quieter, a lot easier to swap out hotends, and maintain than the P1P.
