After seeing this video in our analytics, I thought I'd check it out. This is an awesome video, and I bet Luke would concur with all your points! - Perry
Very good job on this video. 3 years ago your information is more helpful and informative than other peoples "experiences" running a farm in 2024. Thanks for being honest and sharing your experience rather throwing ads all over the place like other content creators.
Honestly ? You can't unless you're willing to invest in litigation services and lawyer up. Don't sell STLs but only physical goods if you don't want to take that risk. Or offer STLs of models that are tailor made to measure if that applies to your market.
That's fair. In my mind even if you are just running a few machines in sort of a production environment it falls under farm. I am fine with it being a garden :)
@@ModBotArmy If you have more than 2 its a farm. The management is equally chaotic when you get above 2. I have 8 and they are all one brand, and still a bitch to keep track of....Thanks for doing this video I thought I was losing my mind and doing things the hard way....
@@OutsiderDreams mostly cosplay props, and toys on ebay. Due to family events I stopped selling after the holiday season 2018-2019. I briefly printed face-shields in 2020 to local hospital with a group of folks. I am considering starting up again, if I can find a project....maybe, I use repetier server and host for the farm management, I purchased before octopie had their server up and running.
Are you making any profit or just trying to recoup losses with revenue. Starting a print farm would cost a fair amount and since so many are in it - parts are cheap so it is a race to bottom for pricing.
I just bought printers 10 and 11 last week. This is great advice, especially about when you DO need a color assortment and when you DON'T. I honestly wish I didn't have need for the nearly 40 dif colors I have, but my market kinda demands it. I learned very quickly that having multiple "like" printers is a HUGE thing. I have 6 Ender 3 Pro, 4 Biqu B1, and a Chiron (for personal things). The only thing I noticed you didn't touch on was MAINTENANCE DOWNTIME. Always have simple spare parts at the ready...nozzles, fans, tubing, belts, wheels, etc.
Didn't mention if he made any profit, your selling cheap stuff, lots of competition, are you designing things for clients (the only actual value in this business) or are you running a loss leader where you are trying to recoup costs of startup, supplies, shipping, etc.
I really liked it. I would love to see a video going in on the business side of it. Like what did and did not work on etsy or with promotions and how you did your pricing and how much you earn from selling one part.
Might be something that I can revisit. I originally was going to get into the finances side of things but it was not readily available on ebay at least. May need to dig a bit deeper. I am sure that info is archived if I pull an extended report.
The best way to determine pricing is to research if there's any competition. If there is uncercut them a few bucks until you get enough reviews. Then you can match or even raise your price. If there is no competition do a survey to find out how much someone would pay. Or, like I did, try to sell something to someone at a price you make up and you can judge if it's too high, too low, or just right simply based on their facial expression or initial remark. "oh that's it?!" = too low "woah how much?!" -= too high
So the message I am getting from all these types of videos is that the producers are NOT charging enough for their talent/products, which is why they all decide to go on youtube and teach... Anyone thinking of doing this really needs to value their worth or dont bother starting.
This. I used to offer CAD services as well as printed products. Not very profitable. Problem with CAD is people keep asking you to make changes for the initial agreed price and in the end, you work for peanuts. Printing is quite profitable- if you make things that are easy to clean and don't take too much time and material.
As a former business owner and founder, I can relate to the lessons about workspace. It can get overwhelming. I'm seeing the same issues as I evaluate larger printers, laser engravers, and CNC routers. Quality is everything. Thank you for producing excellent videos for the Maker community.
I just don't see a print farm being a real money maker. As a side hobby, I think you could make a few bucks.... but realistically trying to support yourself off printing parts that sell for under $10..... just is not realistic. I have made some stuff for people for money and have been asked "you should sell these on EBAY", but again, selling $5 items is not going to net a livable wage. As a comparison, as a welder, I can make $1000 profit in a day doing side jobs. I love 3d printing and modeling but I just dont see a path for it becoming my main income.
Great video. Thanks for sharing your experiences. You didn’t mention about the monetary reward, after all the expenses, how much did you make in the last 12 months of your Print Farm? Or, if you don’t want to answer that, how much would you think a 1 man band could realistically make in a year?
I did want to go into this more but initially looking at ebay I was only able to show sales from this year. I need to do a deeper dive into pulling up sales data. That I feel could be a video in itself.
i believe this guy did it solo ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N_ZIukfpw5M.html not sure tho. its been a while since i watched the vid.
Great advise. I've retired and got into 3D Printing. I think I have a nitch on a couple of projects and thanks to watching you, it gives me a good starting point. I don't need to pay rent with this "Farm", just golf money!
Yeah, my 1st 3D printer just arrived today. I’ve worked professionally, as a designer in packaging, for years. But, I want to continue something that I’d enjoy, where I can produce, even when this corporate job disappears or I retire, if that’s even a reality. I just don’t want to sit around, like I think some of my coworkers are doing, thinking the job will last and cover them forever, when the evidence is quite the contrary.
Save 20 minutes, here's the summary 1. Use all the same machine 2. Get a Farm Management package 3. Limit inventory and options 4. Increase lead time 5. Use USPS 1st class mail
I’ve been struggling to grow my own 3d printing business and am looking to basically start over from scratch and use what I’ve learned not to do to make the 2nd business better. With my first one we offer hand painted models and just don’t charge nearly enough for it and it’s become a sore subject. I also got into a bad financial situation buying some fairly expensive printers that I assumed would be less maintenance than the hobby grade stuff, and instead they print like garbage 80% of the time and need constant babysitting and tweaking.
If they're branded printers, sell them. Join the E3 gang. You can charge more for your hand painted models, you have the reviews now so push prices up gradually until it reflects what you do. I'm looking now at 3d Printing as a business, it won't be my first business, and from what I see, resale prices of used machines can be 80% of the new cost, especially on the creality units which are cheap and cheerful.
Enjoyed watching your video as i can pretty much relate to all that was mentioned. I started off 3D printing as a hobby with two machines and selling a couple items on eBay. Due to covid and being made unemployed i decided have a go at turning my hobby into a business. My business has been running from home over a year now and have 12 machines running most of the time. What i have learnt being a 1 man business is that 3D printing takes up a lot of my time. You have to balance work time and free time. Can be difficult and in my case i find myself working 7 days a week. At the moment im still happy being my own boss and working from home. Do miss a regular monthly wage though.
Thanks for sharing! In college a few friends and I built an online marketplace for 3d printing - unfortunately Make XYZ and 3dHubs kind of took out the market. We pivoted to a 3d printing "loot box" concept and ran that for a few years instead. Also, I can definitely relate to your experience and opinions of full time "office work" and running your own business. It's fun, but once you reach a certain scale having a separate "work" and "personal" life starts to sound like a better option.
@@blazzz13 Choice paralysis is a real thing. I have suffered it. Hell, only reason I’m here is trying to figure out passive income ideas. I’ve gone through Stocks Crypto NFTs Airbnb Turo (car rental) Course creation Shutterstock Dividends Now this. Like merchandise for RU-vidrs, the creative aspect is hard bc the ideas are numerous to the point of distant.
@@vgman94 No such thing as "passive income". Everything requires work. Your best bet is to find something you enjoy doing and turn that into a business...but it seems like you're looking for a get rich quick scheme. Good luck I guess.
Thankyou so much for this video. As someone who is working on their first self produced/self designed item for a niche market- this help confirmed and clarify a lot of things for me. It was really reassuring to know that some of the things I've done thus far, were the 'right' things to do. I.e. probing the market for interest, preparing ahead of time, not over extending or committing too quickly/too early.
I have no interest in building a print farm and my first printer hasn't even arrived yet, but this video showed up in the list and I'm glad I watched it. Thanks for sharing your experiences and what worked for you. I believe in learning from other people's experiences and I appreciate you sharing them.
Great video, and lots of good info !! Only thing missing was the secret sauce on what you exactly made and what the money was like :) ... I own 7 different printers and only print at the hobby level. But I have thought about doing more mass production. I just worry the 3D printing is just to damn slow... Thats why I know own 2 CNC X2 mini mills ... LOL I pretty much have my own maker space :)
Thank you for making this! I have been wanting to sell some of my designs for a wile now, but I was intimidated as all I own is an Ender 3 v2 and an Anycubic Mega S. Even though these printers are in my room as well, I think I'll give it a shot!
Hey Modbot, did you do any advertising? How did you initially grow? I'm starting an ETSY store in the next couple of weeks and would appreciate any advice. Great video!
So I actually did not do any advertising. I kept it completely separate from my channel and just wanted to see if I could build it up organically. I did try both ebay and Etsy promoted listing but in most instances did not feel like it was worth it. I do agree that beginning to build a social media for your Etsy is definitely something that you should be starting. Good luck with your store :)
I’m always interested in hearing about different experiences with print farms. I would LOVE to run one myself but I don’t have a product. That’s my big hang up, I guess I’m not that creative.
Wise advice. I'm running 11 printers.... I wish I would have seen this video before getting hooked! (Albeit - I have 10 Prusa iMK3S and on Fablicator dedicated to flexibles) Thanks for posting.
Nice video. And yes we only using per material 1 type of printer to keep things simple and organized. Key feature is you focus on parts you can mass produce and possible injection mold later on. Printer Farm is to get your part going once the market demands go up you are way better off to order via injection molding and sell from there with drop ship. It is always how you skin the cat. We sell our parts in currently 4 countries but the way we adding we will be selling globally and using there for also Amazon and Ebay as platforms since we can automate and run our books centralized as well.
I wonder how much someone could make (realistically) when you have to take ALL costs into account. Power, rent, in-sewer-ants... (cough, Terry Pratchet joke there) and so on all factor in. Not everyone is on their parent's dime for that!
@ModBotArmy. Hey thanks for lessons learned video. Since you've got so much experience I'd like your advice if you've got a min. I'm thinking of doing a very small Esty store just to pay for the initial investment of the machine and print only only functional components that need high performance engineering filaments like CF Nylon or PEKK for example. Is this realistic in your opinion?
About 6-7 months into my print farm experience and this video is spot on, even down to the emotional side of it. I'm 24 going on 25 so this video was a little too close to home lol.
Hi Ewok, working on software for print farm operators, and would love to learn more about your operation pain points. Let me know if you are interesting in chatting.
Why can't the 3D printer manufacturers sell a completely assembled with a list of options you can get & factory tested. I would pay more for this option.
Prusa does exactly that. I just bought one fully assembled, inspected and tested, ready to go. I took it out of the box, plugged it in, loaded the filament put in my SD card with my g-code, and selected the file...BOOM...perfect print. It's been running flawlessly for 2 months now.
Why didn't you use the extra income from the farm to pay for its own space, or a larger place to rent? Then it could exponentially scale and you wouldn't have to worry about the security of a boring 9-5 job.
What an amazing video, honestly... You covered everything. and you poured your heart, your success, your decisions, your failures... thank you for this. Success!
Thanks for the info. I'm stay home dad at the moment. Would like to find a way to make some extra money when I'm not running the kids all over town, I stumbled across this researching 3d printers. Plus as a former electrician I would like to focus on something else, because working in the FL heat sucks!
Repair/replacement parts -- what did you keep on hand, ehat did you use? I can see consumables such as filament and bed adhesion products, then items such as nozzles, but after that, my crystal ball is cloudy -- hotend parts? Extruder parts? Thanks for sharing your story, and for the great videos!
It's hilarious how similar your story is to mine. I'm lucky enough to have a garage to put the printers, all my printers are the same, and I only print in one color. If I had to have the printers in my room I would go insane, I already spend all my time in here as I'm a full time student.
Great video! Are you or others running a farm of similar scale and selling through Etsy doing so under any sort of formal business structure (like an LLC)? Or can I open an Etsy account and start selling right away? Did you have to do any complicated accounting or anything for taxes or is all of that pretty straightforward?
Stable Pay check what I mean I understand but what your doing is much fun. I think you need to run the farm again and go big damn I don't like this video now 🤣
you could have easily sold your online shops by the way - plenty of people in the comments who would have been interested in buying your part-models and store-accounts
Would you say that today there are so many people offering 3D printing service that it would be better just to design prints and use one of the 3D printer services to print and ship your products as the sales come in?
So you've designed models?! Do you know what is needed to make high detailed models like d&d miniatures and comic book characters. I cant really find anything about how to make these things. Theres all sorts of programs like tinkercad, but they're very simple shapes. I wanna learn how to make much more complex models but have no clue where to start. Im a tattoo and comic artist. I can sketch just about anything and would love to bring this to cad and create my own stuff. Are there special programs for this?
if you wanna make decorative/organic stuff you don't wanna use cad software, use something more art focused like blender. look for the donut tutorial by Blender Guru , its a great youtube tutorial that many people use to learn blender.
I watched a video from beginning to end and I was looking good too starting something like this I am still going to do it but I'm going to take my time but you did discourage me is doing something like this in the future video was not helpful at all
Yeah and be prepared to have to deal with jerks. I had a guy take a 3d print that I had designed and printed for him goto China and have it reverse engineered and injection molded.
bought some sunlu and it had melted flat spots and a lot of inconsistencies in a roll that ripped out the bowden tube and broke my printer mid production not cooooooooool
5:13 Those licenses can be kind of tricky; a lot of times "no commercial use" applies to the model (or file) itself, and not what you actually print from it. Make sure to read carefully, and if you're posting, make sure to select the license that actually represents what you want (also if you're posting, please make sure your model is actually designed for the process.. I can't tell you how many times I've had to completely remake models because they're mostly decent, but there's just a few things that make them unreasonably difficult to print.. it really doesn't have to be like this..)
Was pretty all over the place, some drone accessories, pcb mounts, custom pc brackets/mounts, small parts for internal components in a car, (custom clips for things that broke). I didnt end up feeling like I needed to specialize in one niche only since I was not running my own store or really building a brand. On eBay I felt that even if I was all over the place and the items had search quires ebay would send my listings traffic. At the beginning quite a few hours 10-20 after that not nearly as much 2-5 I would say. I became to busy just working on existing listings.
Seems like a very very low margin business to operate and not worth the time to be honest (using hobbyist machines anyone can buy and print the same product before the item you print gets to their door.) Lots of expenditures, lots costs, maintenance, supplies etc etc.
What tool did you use to keep track of the finances? Did you even have a plan of how much work time and machine time you put into it? And how much you spent on spare parts, electricity, filament, shipping fees, garbage disposal and all the other expenses? Did you have a registered business, and how you handled taxes? Working from home and be your own boss is okay, but i think you absolutely must keep track of where the money goes or comes from. Or maybe i'm just too old to fool myself into a successful one bedroom business with 40? I don't know...
I may have slightly misspoken. It looks like 3dprinterOS is one of the versions I was thinking of and I believe Raise has their cloud management that is open to non Raise3D machines. There may be others for Octoprint but I do not think they are near as developed as OctoFarm.
OctoFarm is awesome! I have 22 printers on my OctoFarm setup right now, 18 Prusas, 2 Tax 6s, and 2 Gigabot 3+ printers. I super recommend it! It is working great for me! They don't have a print queue feature yet but I got one going with my own script and it's such a time saver. 3dprinterOS has spammed me so many times trying to sell me on their cloud subscription (per printer!) and I have not heard good reviews. They are just reselling reskinned open source software from what I can tell and that seems kinda lame.
