I am a hobbyist, and my job will probably never require me to design and print anything for work.
I do really enjoy the process of conceptualizing, designing, and printing, and have done so for myself and some close acquaintances.
I’ve spent many hours/days learning the tools of the trade and was wondering if there was an opportunity to make some money as a side gig. Has anyone been successful doing this, and how did you go about it?
Here are a couple of my early designs, I plan to upload more once I clean things up a bit.
Your Thingiverse only has two over year old designs? How serious are you?
Yea, I am net positive with my 3d printing, that includes buying another printer. You have to remember that the raw material the 3d printers use is relatively cheap. I can print off something that costs me less than $1 per part, not including labor, electricity, etc, and still charge multiple times what it cost me to make. #d printing is basically a money making machine if you find the right niche and are decent at design.
Haha yep! There are actually several iterations on those models that have not yet been uploaded, as well as some commissioned work that I keep on a private share.
If I can make enough to offset the cost of my time and materials, I’m more than happy.
How did you get started with selling 3d prints? Where are you selling your things?
So what I sell is kind of a replacement part for a machine that usually wealthy people own. Sorry I know that’s super vague. But anyways I redesigned as one part to make it custom and now I sell those custom parts. The website I use to sell them very specific to people who own these so if I had any advice I’d say get into a niche market.