- $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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?)

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.

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.