10 Things I've learned running a print farm

I started a print Farm going from two to about 40 3D printers over the span of 18 months during that time I've learned a lot and figured it may be interesting to share and in this video I'm going to go over the top 10 things that I've found and don't worry these nuggets can be applied to much more than additive manufacturing so sit back preheat your nozzles and let's get into it and number one is that there is nothing passive about it part of the Allure of 3D printing is the fact that this little robot works so you don't have to but it turns out loading filament monitoring prints and unloading parts from the printers is quite a chore when done at scale also don't forget about post-processing supports cleanup and sometimes adding Hardware all of these things take time and as we all know time is money then when you multiply that across many printers you can see your passive dreams start to evaporate number two is energy each printer individually does not gobble up a ton of power or create a lot of heat but putting a lot of them say 40 in a small room is a different story all it takes is a print Farm to grow to around four or five printers before you need to start thinking about power at that point you need to expand Beyond one circuit which if you're doing this in a bedroom may not even be available I've got 11 20 amp circuits in this print room which I installed before moving in here it was definitely Overkill when I just had 25 printers but as my farm scales I'm more and more thankful that I already have have this set up but since most of that power is eventually turned into heat that creates another issue when they're doing their thing each one gives off about as much heat as a 100 watt incandescent light bulb which may not sound like a lot but 4 000 watts of light bulbs is very toasty but then factor in during warm-up they give off even more heat this room is normally at least 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the main area the heat in the room is actually not a bad thing for the printers themselves it just makes it uncomfortable to work in as a human being this mini split we've got installed in this room is great because I can turn it on while I'm working and then turn it back off when I leave making sure your space can handle the energy input and removal is key and number three is air quality similar to the previous point one printer is usually not a huge concern as long as you aren't printing nasty materials like ABS but 40 printers even printing benign Plastics like petg can generate vocs and particulates but I was curious to know exactly how much so I bought this little air monitor which measures a bunch of things but small particulates and vocs are really what I'm looking for here you can see the Baseline reading in the main area of my shop this is after letting the area normalize and nothing really going on around it then I place it inside the print room and not a massive difference I went so far as to putting it right next to a couple printers who were actively Printing and if anything the VOC count Rose slightly but it's still well within the safe and acceptable range of Everyday Use but because we've got employees now we've got several people coming in and out of the building I thought I'd rather be safe than sorry so I've elected to put a large air purifier in the print room to run just before we come in in the morning and continuously run throughout the day I've got it hooked up to a smart outlet that turns it off once we leave the building so that we're not cleaning air when we don't need to be and when that filter is running you can see a slight drop in small particle count and VOC this particular filter has a massive cadr which is clean air delivery rate of about 665 cubic meters per hour which means while it's running it can turn over the air in this room in about 12 minutes now I'm airing on the side of caution but even with a small farm I'd recommend a small air purifier located close by especially if it's in somewhere like your house number four is prepare to grow 3D printing is a lot of fun and it's a rapidly growing low volume High mix Manufacturing method I'm seeing more and more small businesses pop up that leverage 3D printing to make products I use mine to produce woodworking tool improvements but take my buddy Derek at stubby nozzle company he 3D prints custom handheld blower ends for car detailing and washing supporting a high variety of makes and models or take print error they offer really cool sculpture looking planners and vase holders the applications are all over and if you find a niche that works prepare to grow one of the most attractive features of 3D printing as a manufacturing method is the low price entry point for a few hundred dollars you can start producing widgets in your bedroom to sell other manufacturing methods like injection molding and CNC Machining tend to have a higher barrier of entry for a new product concept number five standardization is key when it comes to the printers you run spare parts and even filament standardizing is very important again when you just have one or two printers it doesn't seem like a big deal but when you need to create print files for a fleet of printers you don't have to create those files in multiple different software platforms or create different file types the same goes for spare parts having Universal parts means you don't need to keep such a high inventory and it's easy to know when to reorder all of these process are Mark III S pluses so I know the thermistors hot ends fans cables Etc that I have all fit on them I started introducing some different makes and models as a kind of longevity experiment that I'm running but I now need to stock Parts specific to those machines too which is an added level of complexity finally filament standardization is also critical for a couple of reasons turns out filament can have a pretty big impact on both the quality and reliability of your Fleet finding filament that all but eliminates these issues is important for maximum uptime my biggest tip to anyone with a 3D printer or a print Farm is don't go bargain hunting when it comes to filament that would be like building Fine Furniture with Home Depot two by fours I buy three kilogram spools in bulk from a company called push plastic which is all manufactured here in the US those larger three kilogram spools are also such a Time Saver changing out material from one kilogram spools got old pretty quick think of feeding your printer is good filament like a well-balanced meal sort of like what factor would be to humans and did I get you factor makes meeting your nutrition goals easier than ever by delivering fresh never Frozen dietitian approved meals right to your doorstep their team of gourmet chefs creates each meal using only ingredients with Integrity to help you feel your best all day long now if you're like me you're probably too busy running around during the day to think about lunch and when you start to feel that stomach Rumble the urge is to grab something quick which usually means something terrible for you I've been a paying customer factor for well over two years at this point so I'm not just some YouTube guy telling you to buy a mystery box I really think it's a valuable service worth considering here's how it works simply choose how many meals you want per week narrow down your preferences or just go for Chef's Choice like I do and pick from over 34 flavor-packed fresh never Frozen options that change each week your meals then show up at your door ready for the fridge when it's time to eat simply pop them in the microwave for two minutes and you're done need that extra boost to support your Wellness goals and feel your best to tackle a busy Autumn dry Protein Plus meals with 30 grams of protein or more per serving Guys these meals are actually good like I said I eat them all the time if you want to try it out head to factor75.com or click the link below and use the code shop nation50 to get 50 off your first Factor box that's factor75.com or the link and use code shop nation50 for 50 off your first Factor box okay so now I could just trade my dinner fork for a pitchfork because we need to get back to farming learning number six maintenance here's the deal 3D printers are little machines with moving parts and wear items things break as you can tell I run almost exclusively prusa printers in my print Farm because well in my opinion they're the best Workhorse printer out there simple design long reliable track record and easy part access means that fixing them is pretty straightforward but even with this room full of Toyotas I found that at any given time I have around five to ten percent of my fleet out of commission and needing repair I think it's bound by physics or something because it's always that way but some of these issues can be addressed with a proper maintenance schedule like lubrication cleaning and periodic calibrations some things however are random Electronics failures let's just say I'm extremely good at changing out prusa hot end thermistors the takeaway here is twofold number one is that you should always be proactive with maintaining your Fleet this is kind of the rule with everything including your car your printer manufacturer probably has some guidance for this but typically at a minimum you should keep your motion system properly lubricated but number two is to prepare for breakdowns because they will happen when you're just getting started you may not know what to have on hand or how many but over time you'll start to get a sense for what you need the goal is to keep the printers Printing and not sitting idle Parts but one thing I've waited way too long to do is start a proper maintenance record I need to track what I do to each printer things like lubrication nozzle changes and fixes or reoccurring errors this can help track longer term issues down the road you would think I would have already done that considering I started my engineering career in maintenance and reliability as a reliability engineer go figure number seven is production planning knowing how much output your farm can do take taking into account some kind of normal downtime Factor say 15 percent is really important for understanding how quickly you can meet demand if you start selling a product that's popular how do you know if you need to expand your printer Fleet not knowing this can sneak up on you and put you in a bind with customers expecting products by a certain deadline also along that same line when you buy filament and how much what's the lead time is there seasonality to your business this is a textbook manufacturing problem of min max levels for your raw material inventory where you set your minimum and maximum levels is entirely dependent on all of those factors here's the kicker though once you figure it out it's probably going to change as your business grows so just make sure to adjust accordingly there have been several times where I cut it a little too close with filament reorders and got caught with my pants down metaphorically speaking number eight is print job management there are many 3D printers out there which can be wirelessly controlled and monitored this is definitely nice from a management standpoint but my room full of Corollas unfortunately are not so high tech each printer runs ice isolated from a local SD card containing the print files yeah since I'm only printing a relatively limited number of product skus managing the print files themselves is pretty easy Once a design is finalized and the print file is proven out I just copy and paste it to my fleet but individually copying and pasting on 40 SD cards is a giant pain in the ass so my friend Derek at stubby nozzle company turned me on to this SD card duplicator you insert a master SD card with all of your print files and with the touch of a button it duplicates the contents of that MasterCard onto 10 SD cards now for some reason these things are not cheap still can't figure out why so if you have a small farm I'd say it's probably not worth it but as soon as you have say 20-ish printers then it is well worth the money I'll have that link down in the description if you want to check it out now I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that you can Network your printers together and use software to control all of them from a central repository I'm not a big fan of third-party hacks like this but that's just my preference maybe if you started with a system like that from the get-go it'd be easier to scale as you grew number nine packaging and fulfillment if you're printing a lot of things things in a 3D print Farm there's a good chance you are then shipping them out to customers the packaging and fulfillment process is easily one of the biggest labor burdens of my entire operation it's something I didn't totally anticipate early on I used to package up orders at night after the kids went to sleep it was something I could do myself without a big setup as my business grew I was not only obviously packaging up more orders but needed to keep more inventory and shipping supplies and shipping supplies take up a ton of room that's actually the main reason why I moved my print Farm out of my basement and into this commercial space I've now got a full 40 foot long fulfillment area and when we're cramming to get orders out you can bet we're using every inch of it I could probably just by doubling it to be honest so if you see your print Farm scaling you should anticipate the Fulfillment needs to scale at an even faster Pace I know it's way less sexy than adding a new Bank of cool 3D printers but trust me you cannot ignore it and number 10 is future technology looking ahead a print Farm represents a significant investment I mean I've probably got just under sixty thousand dollars sitting in my print Farm and at the current rate of innovation it can quickly become outdated which is kind of scary how do you plan for that how you phase out older printers and when do you plan for Replacements look no one can predict what the future holds so we have to make educated decisions based on what we know now if you're building out a 3D print Farm your choice of printer manufacturer should be very intentional I jokingly refer to my print Farm as a room full of Corollas but the prusa brand is a proven platform used by some of the largest print farms in the world including these 600 plus machines running at perusa headquarters seems like every week There's a new 3D printing brand popping up with very cool features and an enticing value proposition I'm currently testing out the viability of bamboo lab printers for life in a print Farm they've already proven themselves as a killer hobby machine I mean two right there but how does it perform after a couple thousand Print hours do the high print speeds actually correlate to more output over a long period of time we'll see I've got a video planned in the future reviewing those findings if you're thinking about starting or trying to grow a 3D printing business I've actually got a special membership based Community setup where I give you exclusive access guidance and coaching based on my experience and the experience of others in the group it's called the shop Nation hustle club and I'll have that information linked down below if you want to step up your game here's to good adhesion and no layer shifts thanks for watching

Channel: Shop Nation

Views: 614,598

Keywords: shop nation, shopnation, 3D printing, print farm, prusa, 3d printed, 3D print business, Bambu lab, shop nation store, additive manufacturing, functional 3D printing, useful 3d prints

Id: y3u1ao25obA

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2023