How I Made Money Running My Automated Ender 3, 3D Printer For Months Non Stop! 

“Let me ask you a question, how much would you pay for this” Me - “ Well wtf is it”. 🤣🤣🤣

I enjoyed the video but MAN that pizza analogy was rough

I'd look for some filament that is close enough in color for each section and skip the painting completely.

"how much would you pay for these" five bucks. "I sold them for 30 a piece" dang.

I love how in depth you went. This helped me a lot so thanks

I felt how the knife dulled when you cut on the glass.

Activation hyper business consulting mode: - make a stamp for branding the logo - use oneway clip construction in your Model parts, too connect them (screws, are too slow= Workflow) - Stamp for coloring the eyes Mode off

Great project! A few tips for the next batch to reduce cost/weight/time: You followed a lot of design for manufacture (DFM) which is great! This means making the actual components of the product, such as printed bits is painless (this is what most of printing is). But you didn't follow enough Design for Assembly (DFA) practices (this reduces time/energy spent assembling). For instance, you should eliminate screws, and move to snap fits if possible. They take seconds - you could have snap connectors on each round module, or you could have a single central printed pin you push from bottom to top that sandwiches it all together (a rectangular pin would be best to reduce rotation of the modules). Even better yet, use adhesive. If it's good enough for the Smartphone screens it is good enough for the 3D printed parts. PLA fuses to other PLA with normal superglue. ABS to ABS sticks well with superglue too, although for a perfect bond try acetone. If you put a slight lip internally on the round stacking modules no glue will run out, and you will save time assembling. Lots of amazing research done by big automobile and hardware companies on DFA, worth a google. I love your jig for aligning the top cork lettering, genius work! That's some DFA right there. I made and sold a similarly cylindrical product last year. What my company looked into was cylindrical shipping tubes for the product. It reduces internal foam packing, it's extremely strong, and can be bought in a variety of sizes (suppliers can make from poster tubes to huge wine whisky tubes and more!). It also added to the unique aesthetic. You can buy a 2 meter tube and then cut it down to size (or get in contact with a local box company to supply to size). You just put plastic endcaps in the top and bottom and you're good to go.

Oh man, I'm glad I found this channel. I love your ONI content and I also happen to be a bit of a 3d printing nerd. Having the same kind of objective scientific cost benefit analysis that you use in ONI applied to 3d printing tickles my brain in all the right places.

just a thought - if you let the eyes stick out a mm or two more. maybe you could rolling the green color on it.

this was inCREDibly interesting to see and watch. very good break down of all steps involved, was like watching an entire business come to life in front of my eyes. well done, really enjoyable, subbed!

I would have printed the eyes separately with the right colour. You can fit a lot of them in one go. Just glue them in later.

I see some This Old Tony influences here, nice

Michael, thanks for the entertaining and informative video❤. I have close to two thousand hours in ONI, watch all your ONI content, and recently received my Sweepy. My son and I enjoyed the video and it was great to see how they were made. I'm more interested in getting into 3D printing now. Though it looks like an expensive hobby lol

I love how you broke this down to explain the business side and all the facets that come into play when considering this stuff. I approve this.

Such an absolutely great video. Loved the process and how you were able to keep improving it. Some great ideas shared. Will definitely help me with my own "product." Thanks for sharing this.

3D Printers are great for the prototyping - the production you start doing silicone molds and cast resin.

I have to say, the pizza metaphor was a little weak, but then again you got pizza out of the deal so I can see both sides here.

thanks for the work. brilliant work at always looking for improvements. looking forward to applying it to some of my stuff if I get some of my ideas sold

This video is awesome, really transparent and all inclusive on how you would come with a product

Man, i love your content and I swear, eventually I'm gonna buy one Sweepy (it's a little expensive the shipping from US to Chile), so again, love your content and thanks for all your efforts on both channels. Greetings from Chile

"It's rather humbling looking at a simple thing like this and realizing how many steps are required to build it." I used to make milk jugs and sunny delight bottles. I felt that comment in my core.

This was such a well thought out and put together video well done sir

Great vid with a real breakdown and also insight into changes that can be made to improve all stages :)

After watching the hole video i still have no idea what this thing is.

For the eyes you can paint it green with the first stencil, let dry and paint over it in black. You can then just rub off the black from the eyes with tissue while it's still wet. Been doing that for signs and other embossed things...

really, really interresting, I've never see someone explianing and detailling every steps, and costs, like you did. great job!

Really enjoyed your iterative process! Looking forward to checking out more of your channel. Subscribed!

Everything what you went through is called "production design". It's the difference between coming up with a concept and another version for production where the end goal is to reduce costs/time as much as possible. Good stuff.

I like how you explained how much time each process takes

Thanks for the break down. I think many of us who own 3d printers, sooner or later ponder what it would take to make money doing production runs. Your video helps open the eyes to things many people might not realize.

This is a great video. Thank you for all the detailed information, very helpful!

Excellent presentation on product developement and delivery. Great job. You want faster turn around time and less expensive make a smooth finished prototype with your 3d printer. (Bondo and primer paint) and then make 5-20 silicon molds of it. Then just cast them in resin with the color you want, no painting and then you can do batches of them. Also get rid of the fasteners and just design in a locking tab and slots so it can be used as a treasure/stash box as well as being assembled with just a twist.

Amazing! Makes you really think how automating these types of production chains cuts the cost and the production times. Keep it up!

Fantastic production quality and display of information! I can't believe you only have 5k subs. Please keeping making videos and don't give up when it gets tough, this is a million sub channel, I know it will be. Keep up the great work!

Well done, thanks for sharing. You touched on the process and expense of each one. Your break down is very good. Markets that is a whole other thing. Best to you, Cheers!

Love this breakdown! One other consideration I'd add to the "should I do this full-time?" question is "what's the market size?" That is, how many of these could you sell before you run out of customers?

That pizza analogy reminds me of when a professor gives a really bad analogy in class. You were the one kid who understood it and went on with it. That being said, I loved the video

Awesome video! I love your data-driven approach to P/L etc and the product makes for really cool case study!

Super informative video, can't wait to see the automation one

For small details like the eyes, you want to consider using an air brush and airbrush paints. My personal favorites currently are Createx Colors acrylic airbrush paint. On plastics I would suggest adding some of their polyurethane to the mix which helps with adhesion and durability. The advantage of using a airbrush paint is that they dry very flat and smooth. so you get very smooth surfaces. Plus the pigments are very fine, and you will find you don't need to spray anywhere close to as much paint for good coverage.

Depending on how you size your screws, threads and holes. You can often just let stuff self tap in. If your building a product with a very course thread. Then you will likely want to change your model so that the thread area is treated as a second model so you can assign a much thicker extrusion amount . I have found in the .8mm range helped significantly, so that I could print replacement Microphone clips. As its very hard to find inserts for said thread size. If you don't do this, you end up with little pockets of air that causes the tap to just tear out the threads you have cut. Took me a bit of trial and error to figure this out. Hope it helps people.

Excellent video! Very good breakdown of the process of manufacturing small batches. The "real deal"! Keep up the great work!

Awesome video well done ! I have been 3d printing a lot of stuff I have thought of selling thanks for putting it all into perspective!

OMG, I'm glad I watched this. This is getting posted to all my social media. Maybe if people see this they will stop asking me, "Why don't you 3D print things and sell them online?" THIS is why. As you found out it is quite a time-consuming process!.

What if you'd print the eyes separately in a big batch in the desired color. And just make an insert in the face as a guide. So you would only need to glue it in place and can use the bottom layer as nice top surface finish👍

Thanks man, i was really interested in your process. Subscribed, please keep on with homemade business talks and experiences.

Great video! Good job dude, subscribed. This has sparked ideas for me.

Overall, this was an excellent video covering the steps necessary for small production runs. This is were making a silicone mold and casting the parts would really help with large numbers. The mold has a sunk cost of course, especially for larger items, but the time saved and the ability to dye the resin a certain color would definitely help. You would still need other steps of course and optimization for a different production method.

Great video! You’ve earned a sub :) What are the modifications you made to the ender 3 besides the tilt for automation? Could you provide links to any stl files and products used? I am assuming you upgraded the hot end for printing with ABS? I’d like to get into printing with ABS and PETGand could use some tips. I look forward to more of your videos. Thanks!

This is a great video. You're helping a lot of people.

Great video 👍 Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😊

Would it be possible to have it hollow with a coaster lid? That way it could store stuff in it. Would be much lighter for shipping probably, too. Not to mention it's adding a feature of allowing you to put whatever you want in it.

Him: How much would you pay for something like this? Me: uhh 5-15 dollars?

Amazing very informative tour in production process!! Thank you!! 😉

You sir, earned a subscription! Love the stuff you do!

You should set the brim only inside the part so you dont have to remove it

Love the optimising steps. I did the same making face shields trying to save time but improving quality :-)

Excellent video, thanks for breaking it down to this degree

Dude this video was awesome and answered some of the questions I didn't even know to ask! You earned this subscriber for sure! I'm tinkering atm but do plan to make it more of a side hustle/fulltime in the near future.

Have you looked into printing it already pieced together with the correctly colored filament using Mosaic's Palette or Prusa's multi material device? (You'd need a Prusa MK3S for the MMU2.) With the better use of swapping colors in the infill, the wasted filament can be minimized (but still there). Granted, using either of these technologies can cause some extra failed prints and does increase the print times a little. But curious about your stance on this. Thanks for your videos and also for sharing your STLs, from a fellow 3D printing enthusiast.

would love to see the automation video!

loved the video, thank you for sharing, keep it up :)

What an awesome video. I started watching this thinking what a cool looking item (I'm also interested in 3D printing selling use cases), then I find you have made a detailed video discussing the finer details of design/manufacturer/selling/marketing business! Thank you for making so much effort making this.

Im feeling some "This Old Tony" bibs from this video.... Especially the oven part :)

I really feel the shipping part. I offer a product with lots of variants. Most expensive one with all features is just under 1 kg. If I go from 999g to 1001g shipping cost is doubled and would make it as profitable as one with half the features, but with twice the production time 😅 Gonna save the box cutting part for testing! 😁

That cardboard guide template is so awesome! That wrap-around design is genius. Really got me thinking of all the applications.

nice video! well shot, good explanations. keep them coming!

Recognizing that bots were tracking you and using it to get lower prices is pretty cyberpunk.

I loved the pizza slice analogy, a good representation of the motivations behind setting your pricing. IE, reducing item price might grow sales, but at what point do the returns diminish. -Me, a person who currently makes pizza for a living -Also me, a person who played rollercoaster tycoon as a kid

The usage of Bots for the Boxes is 100% true. A day or two after I made a purchase for about 1000 odd carton boxes, I get ads with better deals. Well, I just saved them for next time...

Thank you for this video, I learned something from it :)

I bought one last time round it’s great recommend to anyone

To be quite frank here: You made money because your fans wanted your autograph and wanted to contribute to the channel. This is not a product you would generally get to sell for $30.

Thanks for sharing. Some good info about design for production and design for logistics 👍🏻

I really appreciate this detail work through of a real product, from the designing to production even to the packaging method. I'm a leader of a middle size OEM/ODM company/factory in China. We are dealing everyday these similar work process, sometime for much bigger project. I really like this video because of its comprehensive thinking of the whole process of a product and I may translate this video and share it to my colleagues. Good job!

I love this! By the power of the almighty algorithm, GIVE THIS MORE VEIWS!

Haven't finished the vid yet, but the eyes may be easier with an ink stamp pad where you just press the eyes into the paint

Thanks for this posted video. Really hits home and cost. I bought my 3d printer to replace a wood product that I was selling online. The math like yours became a nightmare and showed I would need a lot of printers. The business side of P &L was fun and interesting.

Wow, such an excellent overview of the complete make-and-sell product! I faced with something like that when I've decided to make plasma cut fire pits. I didn't expect to actually needing a full-blown factory (which I'm in process of building right now) to scale the production up just a little bit. You can make prototype with sticks and glue, but in order to be able to mass produce it you'll need way way more. It's also almost impossible to communicate to people who never done anything similar.

Lol in germany we pay like 0,28€ per kw/h

For the love of God, get a wooden or plastic cutting board. your knife is going to thank you.

New subscriber here with a new 3D printer still in the box…. I’m excited, and your video definitely lit the fire of inspiration under my behind. Thanks for creating, and posting, this!

Those oxygen not included sprites you added in are such a nice touch, nice video!

"$19 to $30 an hour. So NOT quit your day job money" What day job do you have? 'Cause uh. That sounds like quit my day job money to me, rich boy. :|

Lol, who the hell pays that much for something like that?!? 😂

This is great. Glad to see you discovered the value of primer for painting.

This was a really good video. So many things to consider when investigating the possibility of starting a business around additive manufacturing in your home. Very informative. Thanks for sharing.

super cool video, man!

Great insight! Thank you so much for sharing this!

Thanks for an awesome breakdown. Definitely puts so many things into perspective!

Thanks for posting such an informative video

This is a fantastic video! Very honest, thorough deep-dive, and each point was well made (well, except for the pizza analogy but the pizza was well made at least). THANK YOU for your massive effort to help us.

Wow, this dude is so industrious. This is what it means to be making your own money. To detect if there is a market for something, then acting upon it. Hope you make it big dude, you have the mindset.

Very informative! Thanks for making this video.

Enjoyed this video, good to see the breakdown in tasks etc.

Great video. Glad I found this channel

Nice video man, really interesting to see how all these tiny pieces can have such an impact on the overall outcome of a project.

Great video. Great Pro Tip. Thanks a lot.

fantastic work, great video, subbed