Is anyone considering doing 3D printing as vendor or services for sale? (1 Viewer)

[BarrieJ3]

I know we have some folks like Nex and BearMetal that do just absolutely stunning fricken work, but it's more a passion/hobby/fun stuff for those folks on the side and they don't take orders.

I've waited for someone to pop up as a vendor, but everyone laments the print time and says it's just not sustainable to do.

If someone was willing to create some custom holders for DBs and Plaques, I am patient and happy to wait however long in line and pay whatever market price or above is needed to make it worthwhile. Below are some examples of what Bear Metal has done. If anyone is currently doing this and taking private orders, or we if have a public vendor please give me a shout!

Pictures from @BearMetal, will remove if not wanting posted.

 

[Venturalvn]

I've run through some stuff, but good luck finding anyone who has enough machines to make it worth while, even at above "market" rate. Anyone with a single machine at home will find it just isn't worth the time to make it a business here.

I'm sure someone can hook you up with some stuff for you personally, but opening up to the masses will end in another 3D3P situation.

 

[BarrieJ3]

I've run through some stuff, but good luck finding anyone who has enough machines to make it worth while, even at above "market" rate. Anyone with a single machine at home will find it just isn't worth the time.

Yeah I guess I don’t know what I don’t know. Not familiar with the design or print or any aspect of the process.

https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/p1s?variant=41211805696136&sscid=81k7_1mez&

They aren’t stupid expensive and might be fun for me and the kids to mess with? Might have to Google how hard it is to create stuff tomorrow and just nab one if no one will do small batch custom orders.

 

[Venturalvn]

It's certainly worth learning about it, and you will find plenty of reasons to use it. It will take some time to learn how different materials print, but the actual time from unboxing to printing is less than hours, and it's a quick learning process.

For a few hundred bucks it'll probably pay for itself in a way that paying someone on the forum wouldn't.

 

[T_Chan]

Sounds like I need to setup my 3D printer sooner rather than later. It's been sitting in the box for nearly a year.

 

[MichaelBubly]

Yeah I guess I don’t know what I don’t know. Not familiar with the design or print or any aspect of the process.

https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/p1s?variant=41211805696136&sscid=81k7_1mez&

They aren’t stupid expensive and might be fun for me and the kids to mess with? Might have to Google how hard it is to create stuff tomorrow and just nab one if no one will do small batch custom orders.

I've heard great things about the Bambu. Supposedly they have automated a lot of the challenging and frustrating aspects that can drive beginners crazy and it is easily the fastest printer in the consumer space.

I fought with my ender 3 for almost a year with constant challenges before I got it dialled in. Mind you a replaced basically everything and rewired it so the fans no longer sounded like a jet engine taking off in our apartment which didn't help very much. Troubleshooting can be a tedious process of tweaking a few settings, letting it run for 20 minutes until is fails. Tweaking again and repeat for hours. Reddit is your friend in the trying times though.

Slicing isn't too challenging once you get a general idea of how it works and how to adjust and correct for different types of prints.

 

[BearMetal]

Thanks for the compliments on the 3D prints @BarrieJ3! You're exactly right in your statement that becoming a vendor is a massive investment in both time and money. There's just simply no way to do it with only one or two printers. You will undoubtedly fall behind and end up in another situation when people need to wait months and months and it becomes almost a second job.

At the peak, I had two printers running nearly 24/7. I work from home, so it's quite easy for me to monitor the prints, stop them if there's a problem, and put out the occasional fire.

Lately, work and life has gotten in the way, and has cutback on my ability to print. I hope to get back into it shortly. Maybe even running another giveaway. But even when I was running my machines constantly, I would still have to turn people away which I hated doing. For some print jobs I actually created the models but then the member wanted just way too many prints and it would have been months of printing. In those cases, I actually pointed them in the direction of online printers. Compared to the cost that I charged (free!) it was quite a bit more expensive, but instead of having to wait 6 to 8 weeks and have my printers tied up for a single person, they paid and had their prints made professionally.

 

[ThrowBack]

If you need prints pm me

My daughter has the time to do small batch orders