Re: [MakerBot] 3d print business

[Mark Cohen]

I have a knack for knowing when to get in and when to get out of something. By that i mean to know when something is about to lose its value to sell it before something new comes out and what you have diminishes in value. The same thing goes for a 3d printing business. I have been doing this for 3 years. I made plenty to pay for all my equipment several times over in which i also include my laser cut interface kits and printers i built and sold.
But now with new printers coming every day and companies trying to put a printer in every house like makerbot you begin to realize that a 3d printer business will be short lived. Maybe you can do it for a little while still but the market will dry up as the software and printers get better and better.
I am really not doing this anymore for those reasons. I simply print for myself now.

On Oct 5, 2012 6:22 AM, "krewlir" <rillep...@hotmail.com> wrote:

I will buy a makerbot and start some business i think.

I will print prototypes, and stuff people want to have printed. I will also start a homepage with some of my own models and recommend people to visit thingiverse and then print models to them.

 

Is i possible to make some money or it is waste of time?

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[krewlir]

 

Ok, thanks,

I will consider if I will do it or not.

I just not so much money to invest but if I dont make any money its not very interested.

[Mark Cohen]

I think the real money will be in 3D Printer repair, tuning,
installation and training not the actual printing.
Further I think the money is not in the hardware but in the software.
Will Makerbot be the next Autodesk?
Will Makerware encompass 3D Design in addition to just being the
software for a Makerbot? Will it also support other 3D Printers in the
future like ReplicatorG? If it does, then that is where the money is.

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[Cymon]

Marrk, it is awesome to hear you chime in on this because I have a post that will be going up this weekend. I may have to rewrite a nbit now.

Of course the thrust of the article is not about following your footsteps, or even mine. But more about using a 3D creatively as it is intended, as a rapid prototyping machine and possibly as a small batch manufacturing machine to test the market with. I think there is still money to be made as a 3D printer owner since they are not yet ubiquitus, but at the same time you see the meteoric success that you had.

[Mark Cohen]

Sounds good.
I look forward to seeing it.
Thanks.

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/makerbot/-/if86FBXzWFcJ.

[Shawn]

I'm doing a business around 3D Printing. I've been slowly getting it
going over the past few months. What I am finding is that printing
products is a loosing proposition - especially if you only have one
printer. The earning potential seems to be either in consulting
(repair/tuning/etc. as previously mentioned), or in designing a piece -
for which you can apply your consulting rates for the design time.

Usually people see the cost of material and a little machine time as the
main costs. They miss the others:

- initial design/consulting
- pre-processing (changing plastic, slicing, etc.)
- printing
- post processing (clean up, finishing if needed, etc.)
- assembly (if needed)
- delivery costs
- labor/time for each of the steps in addition to the basic costs

Not to mention the usual business expenses - website related costs,
electricity, rent, etc.

So, with all that in mind, printing a Screwless Heart Gear (for example)
takes 6 to 8 hours to print and assemble. Yet the customers value it at
$15 to $50 dollars (in my area). So with a single printer, you earn
$6.25 to $8.33 per hour for a heart ($50/6 and 8 hours). That would
kill me real quick. Adding more printers helps, but then you have more
maintenance too.

There IS a demand for the services though. I'm seeing things starting
to pick up as more people are aware of what can be done. So there is a
model in there to be found too.

Good luck with your business efforts. I hope it goes great for you!

Shawn

[Robert Bonenfant]

I liked Shawn post and Cymon - I like how Shawn scoped it out in real terms - around $8 per hour, well if you print 24 hours straight doesn't that mean $192 per day ??? That just making the Gearz Model - This is a great mode but everyone is doing it. 

So if you are good with CAD and have some Time whats stopping you from Making your own Great Model ?? If the square and heart are that popular what else can you make with gears or other objects. 

So $192 per day for 10 days is $1920 - Wait that just covered your cost of your printer - Now buy another and another 

I think the simple question is are you good at designing and selling online ? Because anyone can shell out 2k for a printer but if they can only take others printer then they will never make money. 

Check out Shapeways.com they have a great business going and make a good amount of profit. 

You really have to ask your self 

1.do i want a business 

or 

2.Do you want to make to make a fast million with little to no work ?? (Not going to happen, plan on spending hours on end to fine tune your equipment and models ) 

I just got my makerbot in and its taking alot of fine tuning to get it just right - I also ordered a Makerbot 2 which im waiting on it to ship 4- 6 weeks

[Joseph Chiu]

I know at least one guy that is on this list has produced a product where his client is willing to pay several hundred dollars for his print -- he designed it once, own the rights to the design, and now he's got his machine printing the parts...  

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[Leo Chen]

Mind telling us more about this guy's story?

[joe...@gmail.com]

I'll just say that it's something in a specialty market that happens to be a hobby of his.  By specialty market, I mean something like photography or skiing or R/C modeling... Where there are enough people willing to pay a decent sum for a product such that you can find boutique stores carrying such products.

Sorry I am vague. I don't want to cook his goose.

Products that are sufficiently mass-consumer can afford the tooling to be injection molded, while bespoke items can be hand crafted.  It's the specialty market where 3d printed stuff has a decent chance right now, imho.

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[Cymon]

I forgot to post this here. Mark, in case you didn't see it: http://joesmakerbot.blogspot.com/2012/09/making-money-with-makerbot.html

[Herón Ordóñez Guillén]

I've also been trying to make a 3d printing bussiness, I sell primarily to design students in some local universities. All hell breaks loose when there's a deadline, and I can go by a couple of weeks without clients, so it's not steady at all.

I'm in the middle of building another printer (RAMPS based) to increase capacity and start selling to other universities (there's 3 more in town that I have not got around to contact yet)

I'ts hard, but I think there is a future in this, as people gets to know the technology.

Also, 3d printing is such a gateway drug for digital fabrication! I want a cnc router or laser cutter :D

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[Joseph Chiu]

I should add that in my own case, I've made a handful of parts that I have sold on eBay (a lens cap holder of my own design), a few print-for-pay jobs (mostly from the occasional people requesting help on this or other lists), and some prints that I've designed and printed out for clients (I primarily design electronics, but clients sometimes have mechanical parts that are needed in the same project).

As Shawn had mentioned a while back, making money on the print-for-pay is generally not a good return on your investment in time/resources.  When I do them, it's mostly because 1) I want to help the person out and 2) it's a good learning experience to work on someone else's project every once in a while.

It's like photocopiers in the early 1980's.

Back then, there were the big high-end copiers that resembled printing presses.  Then the technology started to "open up to the masses", including the repraps of the time: personal cartrdige-based copiers.  For a while, a small shop owner could make some side money running copies out of his shop for other area businesses -- but eventually, either everyone bought a copier of their own, or they went to a service bureau (Kinko's, anyone?) that ran the new generation of high-end machines that were price competitive at scale.

So making money just spitting out paper stopped being profitable for the individual...  But there were plenty of enterprising people making money with the paper they were printing --- they designed forms and documents, and sold their printed designs.  They designed them and used their copier to make short runs.  And when the volume justified it, some of them went to a full press (in our world, that would be getting a mold made).

Eventually, even designing those documents became democratized (not everyone had WYSIWYG in the 80's and even the early 90's) -- and so forms and documents for mass production is generally not so lucrative.   The money these days is primarily for custom jobs -- you're paid for the design work, not the actual printout...

[Joseph Chiu]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 9:28 AM, Herón Ordóñez Guillén <her...@gmail.com> wrote:

Also, 3d printing is such a gateway drug for digital fabrication! I want a cnc router or laser cutter :D

Amen!

Actually, I started with a CNC and enjoyed the highs, but the lows were really bumming me out.  I figured FDM was the safer habit...  But now I'm craving for more...  

[aelag]

"Is it possible to make some money or is it a waste of time?"

I don't think this topic can be addressed as a straight question. With all things 3D printing, its just like fine art - the market is always there, you just have to create it for yourself. 

Hey, while we're on this topic, I'm looking for people who will print on demand for an event I'm coordinating. It's kind of a unique situation. 

Please email: 

in...@3dea.co

I'd like to get on the phone to talk about it if you could provide a number and availability. 

[randyzimmer]

In my case, I had a product I couldn't afford to have made.
They are air ducting for competition cars, strange-shaped tubes with limited sales potential.
The Carbon Fiber ones I made before were labor intensive and materials were expensive.
They also took special molds that limited the range of models I could offer.
Molds for blow molding were even more expensive and the minimum order required wasn't what I wanted to commit to.
With my robot, I can make more versions or revisions without needing new molds.
To save time, I have made a multi-head robot, speeding the production rate.
I've made a few things for others but the limitations of the process limit what I can provide so I just stick to what I built my bot for and leave it at that.
Not many people need them, but when I get a sale to South America, I'll have at least one set in every continent. Pretty cool.

 
On Friday, October 5, 2012 2:42:10 AM UTC-4, krewlir wrote:

[Joseph Chiu]

... and that's the person I was talking about!  :)

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[Aaron Double]

You should look at these guys.

http://makerfactory.com

[Eureka]

There seems to be alot of misunderstandings here about the human nature. Customers are lazy.Theres even a category called "convinience goods" and its one of the leading markets on the global scales. Most things you buy, you buy because its more convinient then doing it yourself, learning all the disciplines nessesary to do so, and lets not forget the one time cost of buying the nessesary equipment.

Yes, 3D printing is the future. Yes, in the future, most homes will have their very own 3D printer, and the manufactoring industries will be all gone. But no, this is not going to be a near future. Why?

People are lazy. If a person, whos not a nerd and thinks its cool to have their own 3D printer, wants a product, they will be more then willing to pay extra for convinience, not having to learn anything, and not having to invest larger amounts of money and time, to own and learn how to use a 3D printer.

This is the market for every nerd that has a 3D printer, and this market will be here for several decades. Just think of the evolution of computers. We like to think that everyone in the western part of the world know how to use one, whants one, or have had any contact with one, but that is not so. Many people, especially the older generations, are not into the IT world, and do not wish to deal with it. Even today, 2012, you can make a buisness by simply helping elderly people installing windows, printers, webcam for talking with their grandchildren, and so forth. There is no reason to belive that these tendensies will be any different applied to 3D printing technology.

But this will not be the reality until 2-3 decades. Until then, you should simply try to offer convinience to everyone who wants to realize their paper drawings, without having to learn anything new in order to do it. Offer them an "all included" service, where they simply kan draw their idea on a piece of paper, and a day, or a few days later, they will have the finished products. Spoil them. Give them a firm estamate, a fixed figure, which includes everything from 3D modeling, prepping, printing, posttreatment, and so on, then do the job without trying to explain to them why the technology is so cool ( remember, they dont whant to hassle with learning anything ) and you will always have a market. And ooh yeah, dont specify on the receipt every subcost of the job, such as 3D modelling, hours spent on project, pre- and post-handling and so forth. The more information you feed a lazy brain, the less happy it will be. Give one figure, and one figure only.

You might think that im being a cynic here, but think about it, this is the strategy of every successful buisness worldwide that offers any type of service. And it works. Because most people are mentally lazy.

One last note though: Even though we nerds might look down on people that are to lazy to learn, dont mistake that for stupidity. If you produce poor quality, poor service, dishonest promises of quality, time frames, or what have you, they will sooner or later realise it, and start to spread the roumor that your a "car salesman". And then your buisness is gone. Respect every part of their being, except the mental lazyness. Turn that one in to cash.

Den fredagen den 5:e oktober 2012 kl. 08:42:10 UTC+2 skrev krewlir:

[Eureka]

I almost forgot:

Since 3D printers like reprap, Replicator and other 3D printers aimed for the private market, is so cheap, you have the posebility to save up money and buy one cash, without having to pay huge amout in interest to a bank by having a bankloan. This means that you can start with one printer, do some cheap work, not getting paid for your time, but slowly getting enough money to buy another 3D printer, cash. And then a third, fourth and so on. Afgter a while, youll have ten machines running almost 24 hours a day, and even though each machine doesnt bring in that much, times ten, youll make a bundle!  In other words, this is one of the few ways that you can build up to a great buisness by making babysteps, and not taking huge financial risc in the process. Try doing the same with traditional cutting techniques like milling and lathing....You will have to get a bankloan for several 100.000 dollars just to get the buisness starting, and then your in the ham(p)ster wheel. With reprap, replicator, and other low budget machines, you can slowly build up, and not risk becoming destitute.

This advantage is extremly valuable by itself.

[Joseph Chiu]

Just to emphasize -- I think we're still in the starting phase of the 3D printing revolution.   The 20120's is the new 1980's.  :)

When I said "The money these days is primarily for custom jobs -- you're paid for the design work, not the actual printout," I meant paper printouts!

Eureka is absolutely right -- you can eventually make a business just from printing alone - but you'll have to grow the business to reach that scale -- and with the Internet and next- or even same-day shipping on the horizon (http://thefexblog.com/usps-to-implement-same-day-service/), it will take a but more work to compete against the likes of Shapeways.  Not impossible - just harder.   Of course, to succeed, you need to make use o that same-day shipping and the Internet yourself.

[randyzimmer]

With my products, the profit doesn't come until at least the third part.
You'd have to really charge a lot to pay for the design, test pieces and tweaking on the first part.
That's why I'd suggest finding a need and filling it rather than taking in custom parts as a daily diet.

[Herón Ordóñez]

I agree. Having your own parts that you can stock and sell on the spot is esential. The truth is that people that need custom parts either can make them themselves or are willing to get their own equipment.

Having a piece that works as is, available inmediately, helps leveling things out.

Enviado desde mi iPhone

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[Mark Cohen]

Sounds good on paper but does not work in real life. You spend so much of your time on design for which nobody wants to pay you the actual amount based on your time. Lets say you spend twenty hours designing something at $25 per hour so $500. Then printing lets say $10 per hour for a 6 hour print so $60. It sounds like a lot for 1 item and it is. So you say now i can print 100 for that person and get $6000 more. Well its a lot of work for little pay watching those machines dont screw up. Upgrades and repairs and deadlined dont mix.  I did this plan for 3 years. I had 9 machines. It simply isnt worth it unless you nothing better to do.

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[Chris S]

3d printing will be an ancillary service at existing machine shops/service bureaus.  Not viable for the long term as a stand alone business.

The long term is that a big player (HP?) will come into the market and make 3d printing an appliance and mainstream the process.

[Joseph Chiu]

Well, folks, the end of the beginning is approaching.  The "Kinko's" of 3D printing are starting to happen...  It turns out Staples is going into the biz.

This is a LOM (laminated object manufacturing) paper-based 3D, but the point is, the mom-and-pop small print shop's turf is now shrinking:

http://www.wired.com/design/2012/11/staples-goes-3-d/

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[Big-E]

I think some of you folks are being a bit cynical in regards to business opportunities involving a 3D printer. Allow me to explain.

I am in the process of going into business for myself, and I try not to let the opinions of others deter me; I've been involved in the startup of a few companies over the years, some successful, others not so much. The reason I bought a rep2 is simple: it's to be used as a tool. The success of a fledgling company or small business is only as good as your business plan, and the service or product you are bringing to market.

Just because more printers are coming out, and more folks are buying them, doesn't mean there is no chance for opportunity. When PC's came out, they were much like the bots people use today, they were slow, kind of clunky, required a degree of know-how and adaptability to use (at least, to use it and get a respectable result out of it) So what if Staples is getting into the 3d biz? when they got into the printing/copy biz, did Kinkos go out of business? no, and neither did many of the successful copy shops out there.

The key for making a business work has little to do with the tools one uses, it's what you do with those tools, and the ability to adapt to a changing market, and to change your operation to meet the consumer demands in play. If your business plan sucks from the get-go, you're not going to make it in the market for long, whether your selling printed objects or popcorn.

The best advice I can give is to check your local area, as well as the web to see if there's competing businesses out there that offer something similar. If you're still driven to compete, look at what they do, and how they do it, and and figure out how you can do it better, and possibly for less money.

I think there will be about a decade minimum of earning potential in 3D printing related businesses, at which time, a 3d printer will be as commonplace, reliable and user-friendly as a modern inkjet printer or computer. At that point, it will be "adapt or die" time.

[Big Bonenfant]

The key is not to copy others ideas. If you want to make money get a cool product and sell it, Dont take a gear cube and expect to make a million dollars 

[g. wygonik]

Staples will fill a certain market of 3D printing that I personally don't think folks with smaller 3D printers (even up to a Mojo) should be thinking about; there are much better things for folks to get into that Staples will never do, and "mom and pops" can take advantage of.

I blogged my thoughts about this a couple weeks back: http://wp.me/p2hTaI-io   Not "the way", or even trying to be "right", but just food for thought.

g.

[Big-E]

On Thursday, November 29, 2012 7:53:50 PM UTC-6, Big Bonenfant wrote:

The key is not to copy others ideas. If you want to make money get a cool product and sell it, Dont take a gear cube and expect to make a million dollars

I disagree wholeheartedly. If this was the case, we'd all be eating burgers at McDonalds exclusively, and we'd be buying all our goods from Sears. This obviously isn't the case. They both have many competitors that sell burgers or home goods, and many of them will likely be here long after we're all dead. Successful companies are always copied to an extent, but small changes to the business model are all it takes to make a company unique, and to carve out a niche and garner dedicated customers.

Those people on here who say "don't copy an existing company" are actually saying "don't copy my business", because they don't want someone cutting into their business, or they don't run a business at all and don't know what they're talking about. Businesses copy each other all the time, it's called "competition"

in a few years, a rival company may dethrone Makerbot as the dominant small 3DP company; There's a lot of competitors out there, and many of them have good machines to rival MBI. All it will take is a machine that does something that MBI's printers can't compete with, and people will change brand loyalty overnight.

Heck, I used to swear by Intel hardware, but after two buggy Intel machines, I made the switch to AMD, and I don't regret it one bit.

[Richard]

I agree fully that you need to come up with some standard products that you can just print when you have idle time on the printer(s).  Unless you have high end machines, most people won't come to you looking to pay $100 for something that is slightly custom for which something off the shelf can be substituted for $5-10.  So if you are trying to make money on a handful of Makerbots, find some no brainer things that you can print over and over again without redesigning everytime.  Of course, make sure you have a way to sell them, either directly or through a 3rd party storefront.  Then have those printers cranking away between real money making jobs and while you are designing things.   Can you come up with an accessory or mod for something that people love to modify?  When I was a kid in the 70's, we had toys called slot cars and would go to a track to race them.  Custom cars were pretty prevalent.  A lot of us would take model cars and modify them to fit onto the slot car chassis.  Well, can you do that for today's RC cars, quadracopters, etc.  That is something you can design once and sell over and over again.  Go Pro cameras are another item.  People are attaching them to all sorts of things.  Can you come up with some custom bases that fit onto the GoPro case and let someone attach to a specific item?  How about a forkmount for a specific mountain bike frame?  There are lots of opportunities for custom designed products that could have semi-mass (more than one off) appeal that would justify the design time and allow it to be spread off of 100 or more of a piece.

[joseph rueter]

Business is about selling first and making second?
I could go for that.

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Big-E wrote:

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[joseph rueter]

I've started a sketch/draft of a deck on 3D. There is one slide that I keep coming back to where I am trying to illustrate all the folks that are missing out when something is 3D printed and the cash that is missing from the economy. I think it's exciting.

Something like:

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Chris - 3dbotz.com wrote:

If you think about it, a few 3d printers at Staples is nothing more than hype/promotion.  They succeeded.  We are all talking about Mcor and Staples.  I don't think this iteration of "retail printing" will fly either.  That can quickly change.

As far as the potential level of ubiquity of 3d printers, as the quality of the prints and scalability of the prints enables "farms" of 3d printers to work, we could see manufacturing as we know it change.  That will is more likely than the "3d printer in every house"...At least not in my lifetime.  Instead, I envision a day when 3d printing shops will be able to product plastic/metal/??? goods on demand.  No more huge runs.  Design iterations/versioning will happen dynamically.

My big question:   What is the impact on UPS and China, for example?  Logistics and the concept of importing certain goods will change.  Will it boil down to 3d printing technology and the raw materials needed?

It is the WILD WEST folks.  (Sorry for the ramble)

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[Big-E]

On Friday, November 30, 2012 12:56:01 PM UTC-6, josephrueter wrote:

Business is about selling first and making second?
I could go for that.

Heck, it worked for Bill Gates, He licensed MS-DOS to IBM before he had the rights to do so, he subsequently bought the software from a friend who had already developed it for a pittance.

You may not need to make anything, if your business is service based, rather than product-based. My Uncle has made a living consulting, and 99% of the time, he knows nothing about the stuff he's consulting on, rather, he finds people that do, and charges a hefty fee. Rather unscrupulous, I know, but were talking successful businesses, not ethical ones.

Another uncle of mine runs a fastener manufacturing business, He's been running this company for as long as I can remember; He recently expanded and opened another facility in a neighboring state. It's not like he invented nuts, bolts and screws, but he came up with a business model that meets the needs of his clients, and he does very well for himself.

I could cite examples for ages, but I'm just trying to say that a successful business doesn't need to be original, it just needs to fill a need for the consumer. If you come up with something original, so be it, great job. If, rather, you say to yourself, "Gee, I wish (company X) did this instead of that, that may be the beginning of a very successful business of your own.