I built a 3D printing business and ran it for 8 months

https://www.wespiser.com/posts/2026-04-12-3D-Printing-Biz.html

by wespiser_2018 • 3 months ago

144 129 3 months ago

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

I wrote this after running a small 3D printing side business for ~8 months. It worked in the sense that I got steady orders and revenue, but every part of the process required me (design, printing, assembly), so it never really scaled beyond my time.

I'm interested how others think about this boundary, at what point does something go from “side project” to “business”? And how do you tell if it’s worth trying to scale vs just leaving as is?

AndrewKemendo2• 3 months ago

The biggest thing I’m confused about is where the order demand was originating

“ This 3D printing business started with the help of my dog, at the time a puppy, and his desire to see my neighbor’s puppy. We (the humans) began talking, and as we ran through a conversation about dogs, the topic came to his trading card business. He’d source cards all over the internet for his daily WhatNot auctions with thousands of followers. Impressive—not only a home business doing real volume, but a lens into a world I had no idea existed.

I eventually noticed he had a 3D printed card stand, and with a printer at home, I offered to make him one myself. “Great,” he said, “I can sell them.””

So a guy selling playing cards started selling the things you 3D printed?

Is that the business?

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

Yes, exactly. It was through a neighbor. He had a functioning trading card business to start with, I sold my first order to him, then his clients started asking for prints.

I'd argue that's a "business", there were sales, supplies, a bottom line, et cetera, it's just the front-end part of the business was in collaboration with someone else.

It was pretty random, but there's all sorts of other 3D printing businesses like this for D&D supplies, tool attachments, et cetera.

boothby3• 3 months ago

I've been contemplating the nature of the rat race lately. If you can do it all, and you're enjoying what you're doing, why should it scale? If it's your side business, I presume you want it to remain that way until there's enough demand for it to be your main business -- and even then I wouldn't want to scale beyond demand.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

I agree, and a big practical reason I walked away was that I was spending my weekends and nights doing this, and there were other hobbies/interests I wanted to pursue. After so many order, it was also getting pretty boring to print the same thing out, over and over, but I could have always raised prices and decreased order that way.

I'm still 3D printing, but now focused on problems like dog and kids toys where I can give away the results.

marcosdumay2• 3 months ago

why should it scale

Because you need your business to be big enough to pay your bills, not just theoretically net positive.

I have made some designs that I thought of selling too. For something like that to work, you need thousands of customers over the time.

It's ok to spend an year or two of weekends working into something that can replace some of your main income. It's really not ok to do that for something that can't.

renewiltord2• 3 months ago

Why to scale? Because hours of work for $300 is not worth it lol.

NordStreamYacht• 3 months ago

Unless you can turn the process into something you can delegate to an employee or set of employees it will not scale up to be a business.

Anything gated by the founder's personal availability is what the VCs used to call (dismissively) a lifestyle business.

stevage• 3 months ago

A one person business is still a business.

WalterBright• 3 months ago

at what point does something go from “side project” to “business”?

When you get serious about making a substantial profit.

And how do you tell if it’s worth trying to scale vs just leaving as is?

If you can make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than the business, I'd try something else.

coldtea2• 3 months ago

If you can make more money flipping burgers at McDonald's than the business, I'd try something else

If you can make the same or slightly less money way more leisurly and with way less demands on you than working a McDonalds, it's still a fine lifestyle for many.

herbst• 3 months ago

I went from side project to business so often that I don't make any difference there anymore. However 3D printing is doomed to stay a hobby for me at this point in time with zero revenue (other than free maker points and therefore new printers, woohoo)

Thing is as many pointed out it's either to expensive compared to molding, simply the wrong choice of material or to labor intensive to actually turn a profit.

harshdoesdev• 3 months ago

i too wanted to purchase 5-6 3D printers and start a business - basically my version of goose farming after i leave the software dev space for the greater good of mankind :)

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

I would start with one printer, only print PLA, then talk to your neighbors and family about it and focus on printing things they want and use.

The card stands were a lot of fun, but most of what I print now are dog toys and gifts for my niece and nephew. It's nice to roll up to a family holiday, and have something interesting and unique you can just hand out.

You could get started doing that for just a couple hundred bucks and some desk space!

dekhn• 3 months ago

I've got enough equipment and skills already to run an etsy shop when I retire, but looking at the economics, I concluded that it would just turn an enjoyable hobby into a chore, and I didn't want to do that.

jasobake• 3 months ago

I wish I could just start a business fixing 3d printers and helping people set up really nice plex servers with hardware transcoding, but there's this pesky mortgage...

Anyway, these posts always make me think of this https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/142eg6r/...

dylan6045• 3 months ago

If it was a business, why would it not help with that pesky mortgage?

Our_Benefactors• 3 months ago

Not enough business, not highly paid enough. No true market for such a service.

Joel_Mckay2• 3 months ago

Customers may buy a retail functional replacement now for <$400.

It is called the Shoemakers paradox, where the shoemakers kids go barefoot.

Also, the same reason why CNC Milling factories don't tend to produce paperclips. =3

Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.

Gigachad• 3 months ago

No one would pay to have a 3D printer fixed. Or at least not pay enough for it to be a viable business. A brand new printer can be purchased for the equivalent of a couple hours labor, and that’s before replacement parts.

bdcravens2• 3 months ago

If you want to scratch the itch, you could fix up broken 3d printers to donate to schools.

6510• 3 months ago

I love the refined personality of the sour dressing guy. Would love to shake his hand and make him a salad.

I see some light from a door down a narrow alley from the main shopping street, I knew this building was empty for a decade and the store front was still covered in wood planks. Curious I walk into the alley to check out what was going on.

I see a guy jumping around as if dancing with the largest bouquet of flowers I have ever seen. Around him 5-7 similar giant vases with layered compositions. Each with enormous exotic flowers in the center.

Woah, what is that? I asked. He looked up and said loudly this is me!

I said it looked stunning and asked how long he was doing this. He said, I will only do this for 2 weeks and ill be happy when it is over! I asked, is there no money in it?

He said, I charge an ungodly amount of money for these. You cant buy anything like it anywhere.

Then why only 2 weeks? I'm not going to trap myself! 2 weeks, a vacation, then ill do something else entirely.

While talking his hands moved at lightning speed adding and removing different flowers.

He ended the conversation with: I have to get these finished then I have to deliver them as fast as possible as fresh as possible. I didn't sleep for days! Cant wait for it to be over!

My slacker life style allowed me to think about this strange encounter for a few days. I decided he was still doing it wrong but it looked absolutely beautiful. I'm happy he doesn't get it.

shmeeed• 3 months ago

I have no idea what I just read, but it's beautiful. Is this your own work?

giarc3• 3 months ago

That's quite the depressing post, but also quite pessimistic. There are lots of stories that start that way but end happily.

mym1990• 3 months ago

"On the economics, things worked."

I would argue that they didn't. 25$ per hour for custom design work seems very low, I understand maybe trying to get a customer base but at that rate you are just going to get repeat customers who want the same low cost labor. Where 3d printing is great is if you can create truly custom things, not knick knacks that can be copied and mass produced by someone else. Selling the plastic itself is a no go, you have to go mixed materials, mixed colorways, things that take time to assemble, and then charge out the wazoo for custom work because the people that really want the custom stuff, will find a way to pay for it.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

That's the same conclusion I ran into, and why I stopped. $25/hour could probably be increased, but my market was really niche: people selling trading cards via online auctions who wanted custom branded card stands.

In terms of plastic, yes, it does come across as lower value, but if you can put someones logo on it you can make something unique that they love.

Novosell2• 3 months ago

This is so ai-written it is hard to take serious. You figured out the trick to making tall skinny things stable? Weight or a wide base?

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

I did not write this with AI.

The "trick" was finding a weight that would work, which needed to be purchased for cheap and installed easily.

randlet• 3 months ago

I assumed it was AI too

"All of this happened over text—not an organized workflow system, but good enough to handle a weekend’s worth of work, one weekend at a time. For a moment, the business worked. In reality, this was the easy part."

And

"The logo was the Boston Celtics logo. The problem? It’s not a minimal, modern logo; it’s a detailed, hand-drawn image from 1946."

have a pretty AI like cadence.

edit: No shade to OP....I'm glad it's not AI, but I'm sad my default is assuming AI now :/

Novosell2• 3 months ago

That's not what you wrote in the post though, and an actual human adult would never call that a "trick".

comrade1234• 3 months ago

I'm in Europe and ordered some dungeons and dragons figurines from ironshieldarmy based in Poland. They print them to order, optionally do the required assembly and base layer of paint.

I had the impression that they're busy full-time but I have no idea really. They have some nice designs though.

I'm surprised they're completely focused on DnD though. Hopefully they have another business doing war hammer, etc. (although maybe everything in war hammer is copyrighted?)

starkparker• 3 months ago

Warhammer IP is a fucking nightmare. They will bring all kinds of hammers down on anyone trying to make money on anything Warhammer-compatible or resembling Warhammer.

Examples of what they pull when someone tries to do that:

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2024/01/24/printed-minis-and...

https://freelancerpress.com/arts/2025/06/04/games-workshop-i...

hamdingers• 3 months ago

Games Workshop store employees will also kick you out for using 3d printed models in your army, even when it's just for casual play.

giarc3• 3 months ago

I'm surprised they're completely focused on DnD though

They could have 20 sites all dedicated to a single theme. Probably best for SEO and customer satisfaction if your site is dedicated rather than a hodge podge of different themes.

dvh2• 3 months ago

I recently had 3d printed part made by jlcpcb, it was 110x100x25mm resin print, 60ml for €5 plus €12 shipping. https://imgur.com/a/ctOTImN

proee• 3 months ago

How long did it take to get shipped to you, from click -> doorstep?

dvh2• 3 months ago

2 weeks (that's their cheapest shipping)

kennywinker• 3 months ago

For resin printing, doing it yourself almost never makes sense. It’s expensive, fiddly, messy, hazardous to your skin and lungs, and consumes a lot of space to do right.

Filament printing, on the other hand, makes sense to do yourself quite often. A $200 printer will do an excellent job of most things you can throw at it, it doesn’t take up much space, is quite safe unless you’re using weird filaments, and even a kid can learn the basics in a couple days.

EAtmULFO• 3 months ago

This post reads like an invitation to one or more Trademark infringement cases.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

All logos used were provided by the customer and remain their property.

misthop• 3 months ago

You made a card stand for the Boston Celtics? The Celtics own that logo, selling it is clear trademark infringement. Same is true for most (all?) of the images on the post. Just because a customer provided the image does not mean they own the the trademarks or copyrights

ghostly_s• 3 months ago

Lol. that's not how this works.

tracerbulletx• 3 months ago

For sports teams licensing their branding is an important business and they protect it fiercely. They regularly take legal action against small print shops, and even bars just for using the term superbowl to promote events.

bobsmooth2• 3 months ago

Yeah no that's definitely copyright infringement.

zephen2• 3 months ago

Especially if he was going to stay relatively small.

I thought Youtube was going to be sued into oblivion.

I thought Uber was going to be regulated into oblivion.

etc.

Money obviously can overcome existing laws, but if you're not prepared for those laws, you will be in for a world of hurt.

giarc3• 3 months ago

I don't think you are making the point you think you are. Youtube confirms to copyright law because they got big enough to notice. Uber is regulated because they got big enough to notice.

Throaway199999• 3 months ago

I know a guy who's sold kitschy pop culture prints for a decade with no permission

ryanhuff• 3 months ago

From what I gathered from the article, one of your problems is that you didn’t understand the economics before you launched, and therefore your pricing was disconnected from the true costs. Next time, try to anticipate these by breaking down the various input factors (material, machine wear, design time, desired profit margin, etc). You may get an answer that convinces you it’s not worth it before you invest time.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

I way under-estimated how long it would take to actually design something. I did a cost breakdown ahead of time on printing time + materials, but at that time the designs were simple, just text.

As things advanced, we had people ask for logos, and recreating them is really what took time.

There is still one lever here, and that was to increase the price to make that design time actually worth it. If I had to continue, that's what I would have done, but I was still losing my weekends and my free time was just more valuable.

dylan6045• 3 months ago

Lots of places charge a separate fee for the design aspect like this. Printing prices will stay the same as the time + materials is consistent, so that's what you charge the client. However, since you're having to do the design part, that's where you come up with a different pricing scheme. I've been in multiple places that had similar concepts that kept things somewhat sane.

ezconnect• 3 months ago

You can use AI now to design the STL files for printing.

bobsmooth2• 3 months ago

You were using SVG versions of the logos you were printing right? Just when you say designing it makes me think you were recreating the logos in CAD.

mauvehaus• 3 months ago

Howdy from a former Somervillen (inferred from the photos)!

If you have any interest in doing custom B2C instead of B2B, there's Somerville Open Studios. I did that one year (2019) before we moved to Vermont just before things went to shit in 2020. I also noted that Somerville Open Container Day (aka Porchfest) would be a great time to have something going (a demo maybe?) at our house given the huge foot traffic. I think you'd get a lot more folks passing by rather than the folks already committed to visiting art and craft studios specifically.

Don't let your likely lousy space be a barrier. We had my furniture on display in our living room (aka: our furniture) and I gave people tours of our basement which had my bench, my table saw, and damn little else. People kind of dig it. Small and scrappy is kind of expected for these kind of events.

Good luck if you try to give a go at it from another angle! And if you stick with software, that's cool too.

Aurornis• 3 months ago

I enjoyed this writeup. It was interesting to read the perspective of someone starting a 3D printing business without first researching all of the countless 3D printing businesses and trying to duplicate their work. They discovered why doing custom designs and low volume orders doesn't work, but it was more interesting than reading yet another 3D print farm story.

The current meta is to license (or steal) 3D toy models and then market them relentlessly on social media. It's a marketing and social media game most of all. These shops have tens of printers set up in a room printing plates full of little toys, a web shop or social media shop to pick colors, and then they spend their days monitoring printers and packing up orders. There's not much 3D printing or design fun in the job because it's mostly a social media and logistics operation.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

Thanks for your comment!

I have just about no interest in pumping out flexi-dragons, although I do have a tupperware container full of them to give to house guests and family.

The 3D printing businesses I admire are all folks who are incredibly good designers making fun and unique products that they sell it before it's ripped off. That, plus some social media content to drive organic content can work, but it would take me years of design work to get there.

bdcravens2• 3 months ago

I have a small side business selling 3d prints, creeping up on 2 years old. It's roughly break even, but that's mainly because I rented a space for a studio to do the work in. I mainly sell others' models (either open licensed, or commercially licensed, and intentionally steering clear of others' IP). Slowly I'm building out additional automations to facilitate scaling, but I'm really in no rush. (Day job is great)

jacquesm4• 3 months 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• 3 months ago

well, there's that, and there's this https://www.businessinsider.com/teenager-built-six-figure-ec...

yapyap• 3 months ago

that single succes story doesnt impact this situation though

jacquesm4• 3 months ago

Yes, 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).

fainpul• 3 months ago

What the fuck is this? What even is a can holder for?

dnnddidiej3• 3 months ago

It is PMF discovery. It is a survey cosplaying as a business :)

janalsncm• 3 months ago

Well 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• 3 months ago

They do wear out...

coldtea2• 3 months ago

Well at a minimum it bought him a new printer so it’s not all wasted

It got him way fewer new printers and more work compared to working at McDonalds and buying the printer with the salary. Opportunity cost.

dangus2• 3 months ago

No, 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.

jacquesm4• 3 months ago

That'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_201815• 3 months ago

Author here:

All logos were supplied by the customers, and a lot of them were custom logos. The real value, IMO, was the name written in text, which is what I'm censoring out in each of the photos. There's still enough demand using alternative logos, since the "job to be done" is providing a trading card dealer with a way to show off their name/logo in pictures of their wares.

I wouldn't describe the situation as "the printer breaks down all the time". Stuff, like plates, or PFTE tube, or nozzles would wear out and break. It's not a regular occurrence, but it does happen, and it's enough of an issue when you are trying to hit a shipping window that you'll want to take steps to avoid it. From a story/narrative perspective, that's the stuff I tend to remember, not the other 99% of prints that turn out well.

The Bambu X1C is reliable, you just can't run it 24/7 and not run into issues. The most unreliable component is probably the AMS, something about that, plus matte PLA, was causing clogs where you had to take apart the AMS and fish out the broken filament. That happened to me maybe 3 times.

In those 50 orders, most of them were for 5-10 actual card stands, and throughput was enough of an issue that I bought a second printer.

As for the clogs, that's really specific to the 0.2mm nozzle, not the 0.4mm nozzle I used after the jam. Unjamming a 0.2mm is much more difficult, since the hole is so much smaller. I did try cold pulls, and several other techniques, but I do think the root cause was one roll of matte PLA filament. Sure, there was more stuff to try, but I didn't want to sink more than one night on the problem.

As for the quality of prints? I stand by the quality of prints as good examples of what can be done on consumer hardware. Consistent matte finish, even layer lines, bold, vivid logos that matched the input pics.I'm happy to design and print something people want, and my problem was never lack of demand.

beambot• 3 months ago

Best source of "open" financial data I've seen from this sector is Whiteclouds: https://www.whiteclouds.com/

They did crowdfunding via Wefunder, so their financial docs performance is available online: https://wefunder.com/whiteclouds

They seem to have found some high-margin value-add niches in doing large signs, tradeshow displays, topographical maps, etc. Seems like there can be some nice SMB opportunities in the space if you can carve out some specialty services & attract repeat customers.

renewiltord2• 3 months ago

I think you have a business here in this space if you focus exclusively on bomb drones and scaling production to 1000s of units per month with near 100% duty cycle.

shermantanktop• 3 months ago

It’s not a scalable business, it’s a job.

Oh no!

I get it, you already had a job. And this sounds like a job with a fragile profit margin, so not as good as your main job. But still, discovering a way to trade your work for money is a good thing.

dnnddidiej3• 3 months ago

The real money comes from the YT channel. And running 20 printers churning out that one part no one has made an injection mold for yet.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

There's a couple YT creators I really like, one of them makes incredible products and sells them from the design side, the other one is running an large and automated print farm.

Two different angles on the problem, but both are using YT for at least some of their distribution problem. I'm not a big fan of 20 printers + flex-dragons sold on social media, since it feels like a low-skill hustle, but adding content creation seems like it could work. Thanks for pointing that out!

ivraatiems3• 3 months ago

I run a similar "hobby business" - at least that's what I call it. I've posted about it before on here; I refurbish and resell old electronics, mostly laptop computers.

As of today, I've sold more than 800 machines at an average of $80 per machine and an average profit of $30 (approximately). That's around $24,000 of profit over the last three years or so. It covers all the costs of its own inventory, parts, losses (e. g. some machines just never make it to sale), and it's built a lot of fun community relationships. Plus, I've helped a lot of people get access to a working computer at a low cost!

This would never, ever scale beyond me doing it. The moment I had to employ a person, pay rent on a space, or start offering warranties and free returns and so on, that profit margin would vanish. That's why it's a hobby, not a full-time job. I do it on nights, weekends, and in between working my day job (e. g. I'll have a Windows install going in the background while I code).

But it's fun, it's valuable, I've learned a lot about running a business, and it's paid my car payment a few times. It's also nice to have a 'job' that is very different from my day job: much more hands on, not as much complex thinking required, and more immediately rewarding. (At least for me. I just love when a broken thing starts to work again.) The hardest part is the customers, especially when things don't go well (e. g. are my fault) or they are in a bad mood.

I think more people should do things like this. It doesn't have to be the thing that gives you the money you live on to be valuable.

leptons• 3 months ago

What do you pay yourself per hour for "refurbishing", and does that include repair or you buy already working old equipment and just clean it up?

ivraatiems3• 3 months ago

I don't -- that's why it's a hobby. If I had to earn a salary from this, it wouldn't be viable.

Most of my machines come with at least some defects. Some are ready to go in a few minutes, some take several hours or days. I mainly do it because I enjoy it. I try to not lose money on parts or other inputs, besides my time.

Lord_Zero• 3 months ago

Where do you find broken laptops that can be fixed easily and cheaply?

ivraatiems3• 3 months ago

I work with several local recyclers. Most of the machines they get are either usable but old, or just something somebody didn't want anymore! Truly damaged machines are rare.

pavel_lishin• 3 months ago

I have a 3D printer, and I've definitely seen people at local art fairs & such selling 3D printed stuff.

It all looks ... well, it all looks sort of cheap. Unless you're printing at incredibly high quality, you can always tell that it was 3D printed, and half the people selling things don't even bother to do much clean up of the print after the fact - a little sanding would go a long way, but they don't bother.

It ends up just being cheap plastic trinkets that I wouldn't buy even if I didn't have a 3D printer of my own.

Just something to watch out for, should anyone here be inspired; you might think your print looks good, but you need to run it by someone who's willing to tell you to your face that it looks crap.

wespiser_201815• 3 months ago

This is an underrated criticism: plastics get filtered out in certain aesthetic environments: you can't really have a well decorated room with 3D printed parts. Not everyone decorates with plastic, and I've been told this several times by friends and family who were getting printed gifts.

For most 3D printing, there are a couple ways around this: sanding + painting like you mentioned, then also sanding + casting into resin or metal. For a topomap project, I experimented with acetone smoothing, but ultimately used "adaptive" layer lines that made the layers hard to see. Another "print only" option is fuzzy skin, which does a lot to obscure the shiny plastic trinket look. All of these options take extra work, though.

With the card stands, the plastic aesthetic was less of a concern, since it was a vehicle for a vendor to get their logo in every picture/video of trading cards they took for cliens. The two things that helped me make the stands feel less cheap where using plastic with a matte finish (less "shiny plastic"), and adding 2oz worth of weights, so at least when you picked up the card stand it felt heavy.

Where I lean in with my printing now is to focus on things that are so personalized that folks get over the plastic (topography maps from home areas, card stands with their name/logo), and then audiences that don't care: children and pets.

fennecbutt• 3 months ago

Eh honestly I would always recommend someone just buy a bambu a1 mini for like 150£ and keep it around for odds and ends It's basically at the point where it's plug and play.

But then again some people can't reason their way out of a paper bag. Like people who struggle to put together a computer...yes, the green colored square shaped plug goes in the green coloured square shaped socket! Wow.

I built a 3D printing business and ran it for 8 months

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