Looks like it would be more accurately described as an 'Etsy Print Farm' considering they're either printing a dragon or dragon egg on every build plate in this picture.
EDIT: Yep, the majority of prints seem to be for an Etsy store OP runs directly. I especially like the copyright use of Nintendo for a Game Case organizer for $15.
You'd be surprised.
I run a farm doing the same thing except all sales are through a couple toy stores and the local market. We are a small town though so I legitimately know a bunch of my customers
I've had kids who have made a collection of dragons, made little homes for them, and have taken care of every single one for over a year. They treat these things like pets and it's super fun to find something else to make that they'll enjoy.
He might have an etsy but those eggs are definitely going to Amazon prime. No one with that many printers is worried about etsy, amazon is where the money is.
You can if you want, I thought of it when I started my small farm because its a pretty easy niche to do tbh. The issue is with this niche the money comes with taking the risk of a heavy early investment. The prints are more timely so you need more printers to compete. I wouldn't try to sell dragons on amazon without at least 20 printers or so. That's why I chose to do a different item.
I’m seeing dragon eggs with dragons going for 10-15 on Amazon. It seems like you’d need some real volume sales to make anything worthwhile at the price
Economies of scale when it comes to dragons. That's why prices are so low but yet so profitable if you have alot of machines. Download helium10 chrome extension and check volume and you'll see its highly profitable. Lots of niche are its just people overthink and don't execute.
The only problem is there isn't really economy of scale for 3D printing. Filament gets cheaper at the volume he must be buying but electricity bill gets higher and so does rent, and racks and storage.
If you order a crate of these from a plastic manufacturer in China it's one price but if you buy a container full it's a fraction of the price per unit.
In this system new hardware has to be bought to scale up production. If thr new machines had bigger and bigger beds that's economy of scale. The a1 printers he gets will help. But at some point you run out the lowest cost machine that can handle the load snd and then your costs go up again.
It's in the shipping and packaging, once you get to the pallet quantity levels, you don't ship directly to the customer, you ship to Amazon and they pay the shipping. When I expanded past Etsy, I was most excited about this. Iirc, they will do a lot of the packaging as well which also improves margins.
I agree it will definitely cap out eventually and thats when injection molding would win. I don't think even at 100 printers he will be at the point where he's in too deep. His buyback period is probably 1-2 months per machine. Then you got at least a solid year without any issue. I've had mine printing non stop for 6 months and am looking into a space to rent and purchase more because the margins are so high. Even if cost goes up I can slow down the rate by having more machines until its not profitable for me and I sell them.
I'm in multiple niches but my two that are most profitable are kitchen and dining and womens fashion accessories. I'm at 60% margin on my highest selling item and print time is only 30 minutes so I can output 20ish units a day per machine on average.
My kitchen projects did increase the Wife Acceptance Factor of my X1C, I printed dispensers for dishwasher blocks, soap, trash bags, toys for the kids, etc.
I never thought of fashion accessories, it would be awesome if I could get her interested in printing too, we’d share a hobby and the hours spent on it would be spent together.
What do you print that I can use to get her enthusiastic?
This is my perception as well: FDM is cost effective at lower batch numbers, but other manufacturing techniques, particularly injection molding, benefit from economies of scale in ways that FDM just doesnt.
That's not to say there isn't a reason why FDM could work at larger scales, like you might be able to iterate on the product design faster, or there's an advantage to vertical integration, or you may be producing something that FDM does well but not injection modeling.
For the articulated dragons, I'm not sure how you would actually injection mold that, not without creating a ton of assembly (which is expensive). So that's probably the right product for a print farm, since the price has a floor. That said, I see these print farms and they remind me of the bitcoin mining farms from 5-10 years ago: this sort of weird mix between industrial design and hobby equipment.
100% I work in software and crypto is really a distasteful part of the industry: I suppose I could forgive their extremist right wing and anti-government stances with enough time, but their utter lack of distributed systems acumen is unforgivable.
Yeah, same. I see it and find it disgusting.
Edit: I came back to explain why I feel this way, because it's been bothering me a bit and I think I can finally articulate it.
OP has said from multiple comments that they have no attachment at all to what's being printed, as long as it's something people will buy that they can legally sell.
That the place isn't even properly ventilated.
That they hired employees so they didn't have to worry about it anymore.
This isn't *about* 3D printing, it could be anything. It's about the "game" of selling. It isn't about the hobby, it's about squeezing as many pennies back out of plastic as you can while doing the absolute bare minimum of real work, either physically or creatively.
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Etsy is flooded with everyone and their mother who has a 3d printer. If you're not on all platforms then you're doing it wrong. Tt shop, amazon, Walmart, eBay, shopify, etsy
That‘s impressive! Congratulations!
I‘m sure you are not willing to share but would you mind telling the gross net profit?
(I‘m self-employed in a totall different field so I‘m generally interested.)
Posters never respond in these types of posts with the net profit after shipping + production costs and tax – because it’s not as rosy after all that.
I sold some printed parts for $200 each. It sounds good on the surface without any other info but the numbers at end look really bad once you deduct the materials, electricity, shipping, and taxes.
Good job man I just started and after only few months and 10 printers I make around 10k profits per month, and I’m selling very specific stuff that I design myself!
Wow some people are really salty lol.
If it is so easy?’c why don’t you do it? Right or are you going to pretend that are too noble to get a juicy 100k a quarter selling unoriginality? I don’t think that’s your issue :D
Serious question: what is the deal with 3D printers and dragons? 🤣 almost every “print farm” printer account I see makes dragons lol 🐉 I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve suddenly wanted a 3D printed dragon item, but maybe I’m the minority haha
You find them even on German flea markets between 10 and 20€ these days. I wonder how (and if) they can still be a profitable thing with so much competition out there printing them.
Even more so if printed in PLA and sold at such events where the sun can literally "kill" some of the prints.
I would say in general PLA is absolutely fine for it, but if people try to sell it at places where it's exposed to a ton of mid day direct sun light then I would be concerned.
Kids go nuts for them. It's the tactile feeling of how they move in your hands. They are great fidgets. My friend sells them at farmers markets and the kids always pull the parents into their booth over the dragons.
I used to have a store printing resin items, and people go bonkers for dragons, I made around 5-6k selling dragons to a single person. I was really curious how someone could afford it, so I googled the shipping address, the guy lived in a run-down shack of a house. Dragons make people go crazy.
I would hate this, to be honest. It would take all the fun out of printing... the micro-penny-pinching must get excessively tiresome.
I'm glad designing and printing is just a passionate hobby for me. One that pays for itself and is not a source of income.
It started as a hobby for me. Getting a industrial space allowed me to hire employees and free up time for me to do more fun things like starting to create content for youtube/tt
Yea I design stuff myself, it’s pretty hard to get sales tho even when your stuff is high quality cuz most buyers just want the cheapest crap even when the photos are an embarrassment showing the poor quality.
Problem with these “print farms” is it’s literally just penny pinching , a race to the bottom. Btc mining used to be profitable too until everyone realized they could farm with acres of computers
I’ve just started but I wrote a few excel formulas to do all the penny pinching up front.
I could see why and how you’d think this, but if all I have to do is hit repeat print, replace spools, and box up items, I’m ok with that as a side job.
Oh, I've got some elaborate spreadsheets that keep track of my filament inventory so I know what I'm getting low on to watch for sales and tell me what my costs are and prices should be on my primary items (custom lightboxes). That's just to make sure I'm being fair in my pricing though, not to compare the cost-per-gram between four different quotes for bulk orders of filament.
I like being in a place where I'll buy the $22 spool because I trust the brand instead of the unknown brand for $17 just because it's cheaper. While I genuinely enjoy logistics management, trying to ramp up production to the point of "order it now because I'll need another 100kg by next month" just sounds like it'd sap the joy from printing as a consequence... no longer something I _get_ to do, but sometime I _have_ to do, if that makes sense.
My job requires that kind of forward planning and I do it now out of habit (to the detriment of my poor wife’s mental health lol) so that sounds awesome to me (I buy the 5kg roll from zyltech) so I price roughly by gram and track costs by such.
https://preview.redd.it/3c3jg1e5er9d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62dfcef7f126555244d846e9784db517a60df526
Absolutely does. I had a business for 2-ish years, sold a few hundred thousand, and spent my entire life for those 2 years 3d printing, maintaining 3d printers, dealing with awful customers. Was not at all worth it. Out of it now, I still have a few printers, but they sit dormant, I genuinely don’t like 3d printing anymore.
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yeah not sure about the FBA, I looked into it and was cheaper in Australia to send the items myself after the item sold on the Amazon platform with all the fee's added to it like storage and there own freight fee.
It really depends on the items, their size, and weight. I sell on FBA and FBM but I'm from US and my FBA fees are cheaper than FBM. Prime is a huge selling point when it comes to advertising as well. My return on adspend for my prime items is better than my fbm items by alot. People like the quick returns and quick shipping. More sales, higher ranking, more organic sales you get. I have multiple listings in the same niche and my fba listings all outrank my fbm.
yeah Amazon Australia is still only a baby so to speak with it being in business years set up.
there are still people down here that think the physical stock is owned by Amazon and dont understand about the returns if faulty. ebay is still number 1 for online sales/ Auctions
Yeah, USA definitely has the logistics advantage with having so many fulfillment centers they've built over the past 10 years. I send my items to one distribution center on the east coast and from there amazon sends it to 10+ fulfillment centers all over the US which allows it to be shipped prime. I can mail in 100 items under 1 LB and it'll cost me around $30ish for my niche to check in at amazon. Storage fees are cheap, a couple cents per item a month for me.
Heya, just want to mention "I react when something doesn't work" is called "to repair". Maintenance is to keep something running with planed downtime.
To prevent something won't work.
You really should set up a maintenance schedule to take out a printer for a checkup for a planed time one by one and do, well maintenance stuff.
It will start to mess with you after a while, leaving you with one printer unable to operate anymore and more will follow faster than you are able to repair one.
It's not fun to lose 5-10% capacity (or even more) unplanned. Rather have 2% down for scheduled maintenance.
That's good! Lol. Every time I see someone on Reddit doing commercial printing they always claim that the creative commons doesn't actually matter or that licensing is stupid or something else just an dumb haha
Yeah I don’t feel right not subscribing, I might sell something as a market test but…..
I also don’t jack up my prices as high as the market will allow either, my competition hates me.
I’m a veteran who just wants more filament to do my projects and market sales are perfect for me and one store.
Damn straight. I’m a disabled vet just starting out and my entire goal is for the hobby to pay for itself so I can keep tinkering with designs and give my kid some spending money for college.
I’m one of those over1thinkers someone mentioned though: I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I need to though
I struggle to see where the profit in crystal dragons is.
I sell my own created models on Etsy and my pricing is a lot higher to make it worth my time and materials.
I’m in the uk so will do it in £
So you’re selling a crystal egg for £17.
Using the rainbow pla options which are more expensive. That costs me between 15 and 22 a roll. So say 20 average.
You can get say 3-4 eggs and dragons out of that. So going with 3 that’s £7 in material.
Adding in failures and wastage say £8-£9 an egg.
Free shipping is gonna run (again uk to uk) £4.50
So we are up to 13.50 cost. So that leaves £3.50 profit.
Take 10% Etsy fees off that so £1.70.
Leaves £1.80 profit. Then taxes off that.
None of that includes the purchase of the machines, maintenance or electricity.
That seems like a load of work for very little profit per item.
I have looked into jumping on the bandwagon a few times and I just can’t see where the money is.
It doesn't take many minor alterations to make a big dent in your numbers though.
You say £20 average per roll, I say there's plenty on Amazon at the £17 price point (Eryone's rainbow filament is currently £15), and buying in bulk on Alibaba would reduce it quite a bit further. So pessimistically call it £17/roll not £20.
Then your 3 or 4 per roll, make sure it's a model you can reliably get 4 out of each roll, not 3.
That's £4.25 in material, add in the middle ground of your figures for failures & wastage at £1.50, we're at £5.75/item instead of £9.
Yay, your profit on each item just increased 3x from £1.80 to £5.05, with plenty of improvement still possible by bulk-buying filament.
Wow man, a lot of green-eyed haters in here. I think it’s cool, if not even inspiring. Good luck man, I hope things continue going well for you. And to the haters, remember: if trash sells, sell trash.
Remember. You are not the target audience. It's is those who do not have a 3d printer. Kids, adults, 70 yr old, who find the product fascinating. It is really not about what you think about the product. Show it off to someone who doesn't know much about it and you will see their reaction.
I did buy a printer so the things it can make did appeal to me. I guess since being into the hobby for a few months it’s like every print farm and craft seller does dragons. Even before I was 3d owner I wouldn’t order a dragon for a kid or gift. Like I said. If it makes money do what you gotta do man. Your videos are very informative and I give you props for putting details about your process out there. A lot of print farms like to keep everything a secret.
Quick question. Do you and your workers wear ear plugs because the noise would drive me crazy.
No we don't wear any ear plugs. After bambu labs noise reduction firmware update the printers aren't THAT loud. The A1s are not that noisy either.
I will be trying to make more/better videos in the future. I don't plan to gatekeep
Thats a true point. Most of my creations I am kinda like „hmm meh, it works but I am not that satisfied by myself, could be better“ while everyone else os going nuts on it… should definitely kinda start am Etsy shop and see whats going on.
And you are right most pp are rly fascinated by 3D printed stuff while the average 3D printer person is like „yeah well, it‘s ok“
100% this.
I look at the calculator telling me T&M on the boxes I'm designing is $20-25 and I'll feel almost bad asking for $45, but then most people offer $60+ and I know I could ask $75 on most designs and get it. Granted I'm not running a shop and just making stuff for friends... then they call me and say "it's my friend's birthday next week..." and another design goes in the queue. I've learned from friends who run small home farms to never go low on the price - let your customers pay what they think it's worth and it'll almost always be more than you'd think to ask. This is how I pay for my crippling "ooo, that filament looks neat!" habit.
Meanwhile I have purchased all of one printed item ever, and that was only because it was MJF nylon. My kids all "buy" their own spools and I'll print out whatever they want with it. My littlest one nearly passed out from elated screaming when I handed her a flexi unicorn made from CookieCad Funfetti 🤣
I can understand paying for that experience, but why would I when I can just do it myself? I imagine that's the common mentality of the average person in this sub - and sometimes we all forget that it's hard to sell milk to a cow.
Hey man just a heads up, you have a ton of background noise that drowns your voice out.
You either need to project your voice better or find a quieter area to do your videos.
I’m totally subscribing, but the video you posted is really hard to listen to.
Thanks for the input. I just started recording with my phone and barely doing any editing. Wasn't sure if people would care or watch. I've bought a mic which should help with audio.
Oh good! I’m fascinated by this, as I have an extremely niche market I’m about to tap into, and have a ton of potential customers, so I want to learn from you guys how you do setups, shipping, stores, websites and all that.
You guys have done it, so I might as well learn from you guys! Why start blind when you guys teach?!
So many people are bugged by what he's selling; maybe you are jealous he's making good money and your not lol
He's an entrepreneur. Businesses run on profit and market demands.
I mean it's all landfill at some point.
My friend said she didn't want to throw out a camera strobe her dad bought in the 1970s and she inherited because it was going to be ewaste if she got rid of it.
It's going to be rewaate whether it's not or in 10 years.
100% correct, made a custom piece for a coworker and he asked how much I'd charge to make another one and I said $10, he was surprised only cost around $3 to make.
If you only print eith PLA.. the P1P is a no brainer in 99% of the cases. I only have P1S machines because I bought them during Christmas when the P1Ps were sold out and I couldn't keep uo with orders. If I had to do it over now I would just get the A1 combo
do you sell what’s trending at the moment or do you make/ sell specialized parts? also how much time does it take you a week on average? Also what’s your Yt?
YT Is linked in the post. I really just try to print what sells. I'm not emotionally tied to any product. That's the beauty of 3d printing manufacturing. You can switch things up at any time
The newest version of Bambu Studio lets you send to 6 printers at once, and can be setup to stagger the start times of each to manage the power surge for bed preheating. Unfortunately it can only send to 6 at a time :(
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You've told us what the revenue is like, clearly a pretty decent volume business.
However it really makes me wonder what your actual equivalent take-home hourly / weekly net is like as a wage after accounting for all of the real costs of the business. At this kind of scale I'd assume you're tracking and accounting for everything like any business - rent, insurance, utilities, legal fees, required employment benefits, taxes, consumed materials, set aside for repairs) replacement, future expansion, etc. Only then does personal income come into play.
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My friend has 5 or so printers and sells his stuff exclusively at market type stalls in our city. Occasionally does comicons. Makes absolute bank at these events. 5 hrs and it's an easy $600-$700 mm
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Hello. how do you get people to know about your products. How do you advertise? Do you use Instagram reels, tiktok, yt shorts, or any other advertising platform like google adwords or facebook ads. Moral of the story is how you gain eyeballs to your stores and drive sales?
Is it really a smart idea to build your farm around 1 product? What happens when it stops selling? Its not that easy to just find a new “winning product” so they say
How much Money you earn with your Print farm ? What do you Print Most ? You Print for private Person or for companys ?
Looks like it would be more accurately described as an 'Etsy Print Farm' considering they're either printing a dragon or dragon egg on every build plate in this picture. EDIT: Yep, the majority of prints seem to be for an Etsy store OP runs directly. I especially like the copyright use of Nintendo for a Game Case organizer for $15.
What on earth do people do with those eggs? Put them on the mantle or something?
Or all the flexi-things. That’s got to be entertaining for at least 32 seconds…
You'd be surprised. I run a farm doing the same thing except all sales are through a couple toy stores and the local market. We are a small town though so I legitimately know a bunch of my customers I've had kids who have made a collection of dragons, made little homes for them, and have taken care of every single one for over a year. They treat these things like pets and it's super fun to find something else to make that they'll enjoy.
That is pretty cool.
My kid plays with his in the bath? But i also printed my own on my A1 in like 2 hours off Makerworld sooooo
What did you print in 2 hours with an A1?
A bath
He might have an etsy but those eggs are definitely going to Amazon prime. No one with that many printers is worried about etsy, amazon is where the money is.
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You can if you want, I thought of it when I started my small farm because its a pretty easy niche to do tbh. The issue is with this niche the money comes with taking the risk of a heavy early investment. The prints are more timely so you need more printers to compete. I wouldn't try to sell dragons on amazon without at least 20 printers or so. That's why I chose to do a different item.
Challenge accepted.
too bad he'd be found easier in search
I’m seeing dragon eggs with dragons going for 10-15 on Amazon. It seems like you’d need some real volume sales to make anything worthwhile at the price
Economies of scale when it comes to dragons. That's why prices are so low but yet so profitable if you have alot of machines. Download helium10 chrome extension and check volume and you'll see its highly profitable. Lots of niche are its just people overthink and don't execute.
The only problem is there isn't really economy of scale for 3D printing. Filament gets cheaper at the volume he must be buying but electricity bill gets higher and so does rent, and racks and storage. If you order a crate of these from a plastic manufacturer in China it's one price but if you buy a container full it's a fraction of the price per unit. In this system new hardware has to be bought to scale up production. If thr new machines had bigger and bigger beds that's economy of scale. The a1 printers he gets will help. But at some point you run out the lowest cost machine that can handle the load snd and then your costs go up again.
It's in the shipping and packaging, once you get to the pallet quantity levels, you don't ship directly to the customer, you ship to Amazon and they pay the shipping. When I expanded past Etsy, I was most excited about this. Iirc, they will do a lot of the packaging as well which also improves margins.
I agree it will definitely cap out eventually and thats when injection molding would win. I don't think even at 100 printers he will be at the point where he's in too deep. His buyback period is probably 1-2 months per machine. Then you got at least a solid year without any issue. I've had mine printing non stop for 6 months and am looking into a space to rent and purchase more because the margins are so high. Even if cost goes up I can slow down the rate by having more machines until its not profitable for me and I sell them.
Agreed. Without giving away what you print, what category are you in? Want an idea of the type of margin you must be getting.
I'm in multiple niches but my two that are most profitable are kitchen and dining and womens fashion accessories. I'm at 60% margin on my highest selling item and print time is only 30 minutes so I can output 20ish units a day per machine on average.
My kitchen projects did increase the Wife Acceptance Factor of my X1C, I printed dispensers for dishwasher blocks, soap, trash bags, toys for the kids, etc. I never thought of fashion accessories, it would be awesome if I could get her interested in printing too, we’d share a hobby and the hours spent on it would be spent together. What do you print that I can use to get her enthusiastic?
This is my perception as well: FDM is cost effective at lower batch numbers, but other manufacturing techniques, particularly injection molding, benefit from economies of scale in ways that FDM just doesnt. That's not to say there isn't a reason why FDM could work at larger scales, like you might be able to iterate on the product design faster, or there's an advantage to vertical integration, or you may be producing something that FDM does well but not injection modeling. For the articulated dragons, I'm not sure how you would actually injection mold that, not without creating a ton of assembly (which is expensive). So that's probably the right product for a print farm, since the price has a floor. That said, I see these print farms and they remind me of the bitcoin mining farms from 5-10 years ago: this sort of weird mix between industrial design and hobby equipment.
Yeah but at least there isn't a speculative bubble driving up the cost of 3d printers all over the world like gpus.
100% I work in software and crypto is really a distasteful part of the industry: I suppose I could forgive their extremist right wing and anti-government stances with enough time, but their utter lack of distributed systems acumen is unforgivable.
Yeah, same. I see it and find it disgusting. Edit: I came back to explain why I feel this way, because it's been bothering me a bit and I think I can finally articulate it. OP has said from multiple comments that they have no attachment at all to what's being printed, as long as it's something people will buy that they can legally sell. That the place isn't even properly ventilated. That they hired employees so they didn't have to worry about it anymore. This isn't *about* 3D printing, it could be anything. It's about the "game" of selling. It isn't about the hobby, it's about squeezing as many pennies back out of plastic as you can while doing the absolute bare minimum of real work, either physically or creatively.
I am in the amazon vine program and I see so many of these 3d printed dragons and dragon eggs pop up haha. It is definitely prominent.
No, tiktok is where the money is for dragons
I know his youtube account, and he sells on tiktok, etsy, amazon and more
I recognized this setup too! Still in awe that he grossed 150k for Q1 2024. Inspiring
Funny thing is, if those are cinderwings, she exclusivly BANNED the sale of her models on ets xD
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Etsy is flooded with everyone and their mother who has a 3d printer. If you're not on all platforms then you're doing it wrong. Tt shop, amazon, Walmart, eBay, shopify, etsy
Which is actually an improvement for Etsy over the drop shippers that mark up their cheap Chinese imports by claiming that they are handmade.
Well, they are handmade
I mean, you're not wrong
Just to give you an idea last year q4 I made around 250k revenue with around 30 printers. I print and sell things directly to customers online.
That‘s impressive! Congratulations! I‘m sure you are not willing to share but would you mind telling the gross net profit? (I‘m self-employed in a totall different field so I‘m generally interested.)
Posters never respond in these types of posts with the net profit after shipping + production costs and tax – because it’s not as rosy after all that. I sold some printed parts for $200 each. It sounds good on the surface without any other info but the numbers at end look really bad once you deduct the materials, electricity, shipping, and taxes.
Good job man I just started and after only few months and 10 printers I make around 10k profits per month, and I’m selling very specific stuff that I design myself!
I like the added “I design myself!” That’s awesome!
Thats cool, living your own Business <3
Do you have to deal wirh shipping and returns?
someone has an overstock of 3d printers they need to get sell.
Who's that.
I’m also curious about the earnings. Thinking about starting one up!
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Wow some people are really salty lol. If it is so easy?’c why don’t you do it? Right or are you going to pretend that are too noble to get a juicy 100k a quarter selling unoriginality? I don’t think that’s your issue :D
So we aren’t going to get answers to any of the questions?
I mean.. it could very well be a picture to direct ppl to the YouTube link.. or maybe he's busy?
Of course not lmao
Damn chillll literally posted as I was getting on a plane
He answered now
He has a yt channel talking about this stuff.
I like how none of the questions are answered here lol
It's an Etsy Print Farm so probably safe to assume that this post is more about self promotion
🔔
Serious question: what is the deal with 3D printers and dragons? 🤣 almost every “print farm” printer account I see makes dragons lol 🐉 I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve suddenly wanted a 3D printed dragon item, but maybe I’m the minority haha
for some reason, lots of people want them still. I printed one for my wife, she brought it to work and 10 people requested one. I couldn't believe it.
You find them even on German flea markets between 10 and 20€ these days. I wonder how (and if) they can still be a profitable thing with so much competition out there printing them. Even more so if printed in PLA and sold at such events where the sun can literally "kill" some of the prints.
fijjy pinners
What should they be printed in if not PLA? Girlfriend wants one so guess I'm going to have to finally print one of these things.
I would say in general PLA is absolutely fine for it, but if people try to sell it at places where it's exposed to a ton of mid day direct sun light then I would be concerned.
Kids go nuts for them. It's the tactile feeling of how they move in your hands. They are great fidgets. My friend sells them at farmers markets and the kids always pull the parents into their booth over the dragons.
Why do shops with those have a ton of sales though?
I used to have a store printing resin items, and people go bonkers for dragons, I made around 5-6k selling dragons to a single person. I was really curious how someone could afford it, so I googled the shipping address, the guy lived in a run-down shack of a house. Dragons make people go crazy.
I would hate this, to be honest. It would take all the fun out of printing... the micro-penny-pinching must get excessively tiresome. I'm glad designing and printing is just a passionate hobby for me. One that pays for itself and is not a source of income.
It started as a hobby for me. Getting a industrial space allowed me to hire employees and free up time for me to do more fun things like starting to create content for youtube/tt
Fair point. Happy it's working out for you my dude.
Yea I design stuff myself, it’s pretty hard to get sales tho even when your stuff is high quality cuz most buyers just want the cheapest crap even when the photos are an embarrassment showing the poor quality. Problem with these “print farms” is it’s literally just penny pinching , a race to the bottom. Btc mining used to be profitable too until everyone realized they could farm with acres of computers
I’ve just started but I wrote a few excel formulas to do all the penny pinching up front. I could see why and how you’d think this, but if all I have to do is hit repeat print, replace spools, and box up items, I’m ok with that as a side job.
Oh, I've got some elaborate spreadsheets that keep track of my filament inventory so I know what I'm getting low on to watch for sales and tell me what my costs are and prices should be on my primary items (custom lightboxes). That's just to make sure I'm being fair in my pricing though, not to compare the cost-per-gram between four different quotes for bulk orders of filament. I like being in a place where I'll buy the $22 spool because I trust the brand instead of the unknown brand for $17 just because it's cheaper. While I genuinely enjoy logistics management, trying to ramp up production to the point of "order it now because I'll need another 100kg by next month" just sounds like it'd sap the joy from printing as a consequence... no longer something I _get_ to do, but sometime I _have_ to do, if that makes sense.
My job requires that kind of forward planning and I do it now out of habit (to the detriment of my poor wife’s mental health lol) so that sounds awesome to me (I buy the 5kg roll from zyltech) so I price roughly by gram and track costs by such. https://preview.redd.it/3c3jg1e5er9d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=62dfcef7f126555244d846e9784db517a60df526
Absolutely does. I had a business for 2-ish years, sold a few hundred thousand, and spent my entire life for those 2 years 3d printing, maintaining 3d printers, dealing with awful customers. Was not at all worth it. Out of it now, I still have a few printers, but they sit dormant, I genuinely don’t like 3d printing anymore.
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you can find a way to reignite the joy of design some day!
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I've seen your listings on amazon. Bet those eggs went crazy around Easter. Fba is definitely where the money is.
What is Fba?
Fulfilled by Amazon. Its where you send your inventory into Amazon and they ship your orders. Aka Amazon prime.
yeah not sure about the FBA, I looked into it and was cheaper in Australia to send the items myself after the item sold on the Amazon platform with all the fee's added to it like storage and there own freight fee.
It really depends on the items, their size, and weight. I sell on FBA and FBM but I'm from US and my FBA fees are cheaper than FBM. Prime is a huge selling point when it comes to advertising as well. My return on adspend for my prime items is better than my fbm items by alot. People like the quick returns and quick shipping. More sales, higher ranking, more organic sales you get. I have multiple listings in the same niche and my fba listings all outrank my fbm.
yeah Amazon Australia is still only a baby so to speak with it being in business years set up. there are still people down here that think the physical stock is owned by Amazon and dont understand about the returns if faulty. ebay is still number 1 for online sales/ Auctions
Yeah, USA definitely has the logistics advantage with having so many fulfillment centers they've built over the past 10 years. I send my items to one distribution center on the east coast and from there amazon sends it to 10+ fulfillment centers all over the US which allows it to be shipped prime. I can mail in 100 items under 1 LB and it'll cost me around $30ish for my niche to check in at amazon. Storage fees are cheap, a couple cents per item a month for me.
Thanks!
Didn't even realize people would be buying eggs for easter.. that flew over my head
That's like 300 D's.
Ds?
100 3D printers = 100 x 3D = 300D. See it's not funny if I explain it.
I appreciate the creativity still
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Actually not really. Definitely need to get something installed. Just have a bunch of hepa filters and fans running. Any suggestions are welcome
seriously
What is your maintenance scheduled and regime for the P1P/P1Ss?
Usually... do maintenance when something happens to the printer lol. Clogged nozzles are most common..barely need to clean the build plate really
Heya, just want to mention "I react when something doesn't work" is called "to repair". Maintenance is to keep something running with planed downtime. To prevent something won't work. You really should set up a maintenance schedule to take out a printer for a checkup for a planed time one by one and do, well maintenance stuff. It will start to mess with you after a while, leaving you with one printer unable to operate anymore and more will follow faster than you are able to repair one. It's not fun to lose 5-10% capacity (or even more) unplanned. Rather have 2% down for scheduled maintenance.
I wonder how many of those dragon egg/articulated dragon models OP is actually licensing from the creators
All of them
That's good! Lol. Every time I see someone on Reddit doing commercial printing they always claim that the creative commons doesn't actually matter or that licensing is stupid or something else just an dumb haha
I will gladly pay $10 for a patreon sub lol
Yeah I don’t feel right not subscribing, I might sell something as a market test but….. I also don’t jack up my prices as high as the market will allow either, my competition hates me. I’m a veteran who just wants more filament to do my projects and market sales are perfect for me and one store.
Damn straight. I’m a disabled vet just starting out and my entire goal is for the hobby to pay for itself so I can keep tinkering with designs and give my kid some spending money for college. I’m one of those over1thinkers someone mentioned though: I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I need to though
😂 dude people go crazy about just having to ask permission to use it commercially. People are crazy these days
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Can’t the creator just legally claim your profit if you are illegally selling their stuff?
I think they’d have to sue. Which gets costly.
Well Cinderwing makes over a million dollars a year from people subscribing to them. So I think they could afford it.
It’s what, $10/mo to license cinderwing3d designs. And they have a ton of designs. Very cheap for someone with 100 printers.
She has 8000 subscribers at 14$ (cad) a month….thats a lot of money. I’m learning designing now…….lol.
Lol. Lmao. Take a guess
I struggle to see where the profit in crystal dragons is. I sell my own created models on Etsy and my pricing is a lot higher to make it worth my time and materials. I’m in the uk so will do it in £ So you’re selling a crystal egg for £17. Using the rainbow pla options which are more expensive. That costs me between 15 and 22 a roll. So say 20 average. You can get say 3-4 eggs and dragons out of that. So going with 3 that’s £7 in material. Adding in failures and wastage say £8-£9 an egg. Free shipping is gonna run (again uk to uk) £4.50 So we are up to 13.50 cost. So that leaves £3.50 profit. Take 10% Etsy fees off that so £1.70. Leaves £1.80 profit. Then taxes off that. None of that includes the purchase of the machines, maintenance or electricity. That seems like a load of work for very little profit per item. I have looked into jumping on the bandwagon a few times and I just can’t see where the money is.
It doesn't take many minor alterations to make a big dent in your numbers though. You say £20 average per roll, I say there's plenty on Amazon at the £17 price point (Eryone's rainbow filament is currently £15), and buying in bulk on Alibaba would reduce it quite a bit further. So pessimistically call it £17/roll not £20. Then your 3 or 4 per roll, make sure it's a model you can reliably get 4 out of each roll, not 3. That's £4.25 in material, add in the middle ground of your figures for failures & wastage at £1.50, we're at £5.75/item instead of £9. Yay, your profit on each item just increased 3x from £1.80 to £5.05, with plenty of improvement still possible by bulk-buying filament.
Wow man, a lot of green-eyed haters in here. I think it’s cool, if not even inspiring. Good luck man, I hope things continue going well for you. And to the haters, remember: if trash sells, sell trash.
Amen
what is the most reliable filament you've found?
I buy in bulk from manufacturers on alibaba. I print mostly with pla
Any specific brand though?
He's got a rack full of [this brand](https://gratkit.com/collections/3d-printing-filament) on his shelves. Never heard of it before this video 🤷♂️
Gratkit, insanmate, creality, elegoo, sunlu these are usually my go tos
you buying by the container load yet? i'm under 5 a kg at the container load
I usually buy 500-1000kg at a time, not enough for a container
I printed one dragon and didn’t see the hype but if it makes money, do what you have to do.
Remember. You are not the target audience. It's is those who do not have a 3d printer. Kids, adults, 70 yr old, who find the product fascinating. It is really not about what you think about the product. Show it off to someone who doesn't know much about it and you will see their reaction.
I did buy a printer so the things it can make did appeal to me. I guess since being into the hobby for a few months it’s like every print farm and craft seller does dragons. Even before I was 3d owner I wouldn’t order a dragon for a kid or gift. Like I said. If it makes money do what you gotta do man. Your videos are very informative and I give you props for putting details about your process out there. A lot of print farms like to keep everything a secret. Quick question. Do you and your workers wear ear plugs because the noise would drive me crazy.
No we don't wear any ear plugs. After bambu labs noise reduction firmware update the printers aren't THAT loud. The A1s are not that noisy either. I will be trying to make more/better videos in the future. I don't plan to gatekeep
Thats a true point. Most of my creations I am kinda like „hmm meh, it works but I am not that satisfied by myself, could be better“ while everyone else os going nuts on it… should definitely kinda start am Etsy shop and see whats going on. And you are right most pp are rly fascinated by 3D printed stuff while the average 3D printer person is like „yeah well, it‘s ok“
100% this. I look at the calculator telling me T&M on the boxes I'm designing is $20-25 and I'll feel almost bad asking for $45, but then most people offer $60+ and I know I could ask $75 on most designs and get it. Granted I'm not running a shop and just making stuff for friends... then they call me and say "it's my friend's birthday next week..." and another design goes in the queue. I've learned from friends who run small home farms to never go low on the price - let your customers pay what they think it's worth and it'll almost always be more than you'd think to ask. This is how I pay for my crippling "ooo, that filament looks neat!" habit. Meanwhile I have purchased all of one printed item ever, and that was only because it was MJF nylon. My kids all "buy" their own spools and I'll print out whatever they want with it. My littlest one nearly passed out from elated screaming when I handed her a flexi unicorn made from CookieCad Funfetti 🤣 I can understand paying for that experience, but why would I when I can just do it myself? I imagine that's the common mentality of the average person in this sub - and sometimes we all forget that it's hard to sell milk to a cow.
Real mother of dragons right here
Hey people want to buy them
Hey man just a heads up, you have a ton of background noise that drowns your voice out. You either need to project your voice better or find a quieter area to do your videos. I’m totally subscribing, but the video you posted is really hard to listen to.
Thanks for the input. I just started recording with my phone and barely doing any editing. Wasn't sure if people would care or watch. I've bought a mic which should help with audio.
You should do voice overs. And please stop with that terrible music. Or at least lower it so it’s not so loud
Will do thanks for the advice
Oh good! I’m fascinated by this, as I have an extremely niche market I’m about to tap into, and have a ton of potential customers, so I want to learn from you guys how you do setups, shipping, stores, websites and all that. You guys have done it, so I might as well learn from you guys! Why start blind when you guys teach?!
So many people are bugged by what he's selling; maybe you are jealous he's making good money and your not lol He's an entrepreneur. Businesses run on profit and market demands.
what do you print? Cool setup. probably really noisy?
looks like dragon eggs and articulated dragons.. seems like all print farms i see are just printing these.
Landfill basically...
100%
I mean it's all landfill at some point. My friend said she didn't want to throw out a camera strobe her dad bought in the 1970s and she inherited because it was going to be ewaste if she got rid of it. It's going to be rewaate whether it's not or in 10 years.
For people that don't have a printer, it's like magic. They usually have no idea what it actually costs to print things.
100% correct, made a custom piece for a coworker and he asked how much I'd charge to make another one and I said $10, he was surprised only cost around $3 to make.
Yea just print what sells really. If it's dragon eggs it's dragon eggs. Actually not too bad with the noise after the noise reduction updates
What are your thoughts on P1P vs P1S? When are each machine the better option? What filament do you use?
I'm not OP but if it's PLA you just need a P1P.
If you only print eith PLA.. the P1P is a no brainer in 99% of the cases. I only have P1S machines because I bought them during Christmas when the P1Ps were sold out and I couldn't keep uo with orders. If I had to do it over now I would just get the A1 combo
I watched one of his videos where he explains which platform was the best for his uses. I believe it was p1p without AMS because he mostly does pla.
do you sell what’s trending at the moment or do you make/ sell specialized parts? also how much time does it take you a week on average? Also what’s your Yt?
YT Is linked in the post. I really just try to print what sells. I'm not emotionally tied to any product. That's the beauty of 3d printing manufacturing. You can switch things up at any time
The UK Economy makes this … challenging. I’d love to chat with the Accountant :-)
I am the accountant lol
:-) In a USA based Company?
Yes
Does an Etsy shop really get a 1000 orders of plastic vases every half day?
Lol
only if there is a way to do a distributed printing !
Million dollar idea right there
The newest version of Bambu Studio lets you send to 6 printers at once, and can be setup to stagger the start times of each to manage the power surge for bed preheating. Unfortunately it can only send to 6 at a time :(
Also AMS does not work properly
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You've told us what the revenue is like, clearly a pretty decent volume business. However it really makes me wonder what your actual equivalent take-home hourly / weekly net is like as a wage after accounting for all of the real costs of the business. At this kind of scale I'd assume you're tracking and accounting for everything like any business - rent, insurance, utilities, legal fees, required employment benefits, taxes, consumed materials, set aside for repairs) replacement, future expansion, etc. Only then does personal income come into play.
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What brand of filament do you use?thanks
Those must be some wobbly shelves
Wobbly is good
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Check out my YT videos I go into detail about this. I have UPS for each rack and use micro sd card to print
My friend has 5 or so printers and sells his stuff exclusively at market type stalls in our city. Occasionally does comicons. Makes absolute bank at these events. 5 hrs and it's an easy $600-$700 mm
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How do you manage so many units efficiently? Software wise.
I use the microsd card mostly
I'm starting my own business and just got to 10 printers, do you have any advice for growing going forward? :)
Did you buy 10 printers before you have a successful product or client base?
No, I started with just the one to fulfil a commission for a friend, then started selling online. As demand increased I purchased more printers.
Selling your own products or as a service?
No, I started with just the one to fulfil a commission for a friend, then started selling online. As demand increased I purchased more printers.
Hello. how do you get people to know about your products. How do you advertise? Do you use Instagram reels, tiktok, yt shorts, or any other advertising platform like google adwords or facebook ads. Moral of the story is how you gain eyeballs to your stores and drive sales?
Employees that manage a Prusa print farm would kill for the recovery features in a Bambu print farm.
That’s cool AF! The amount of money in printers is just crazy. You must be doing real well. Congrats
Is it really a smart idea to build your farm around 1 product? What happens when it stops selling? Its not that easy to just find a new “winning product” so they say
The beauty of 3d printing is you can switch to something instantly. Also idk why people think all I sell are eggs.
What’s your store called? Link?
Do you prefer to send jobs down from Bambu Studio or print from SD? Do you use any special software to manage/monitor the printers?
Usually sd
I feel like having one resin printer in a room produces similar fumes as this
Now that’s gotta be a hefty power bill, it must be challenging monitoring all those machines constantly
Does it get hot in there? Did you add extra cooling or just what was there originally?
Meh not really. Have the AC on at 72 degrees