A Day in the Life of a 3D Print Farmer (Open to Close) 3DPD 3D Printer Farm Life

have you ever wondered how much work a 3d printer farm involves and how much time it will actually take to run it on the daily stay tuned i'll show you what my average day looks like running a farm of 100 printers [Music] the work day begins at eight o'clock when my assistant pulls and enters all my orders into the ledger in production control she has everything ready for me to start my day at 9 30. the morning begins with a walk around to check for any overnight failures i restart any prints that failed flag any machines that need troubleshooting if the problem's obvious i'll flag it with the appropriate maintenance tag we had two failures last night on the mini rack a clogged nozzle and a filament sensor that failed to trip on run out i'll flag the machines and start the prints on others to keep things moving all the finished prints are moved to the cart for support removal and finishing later [Music] the new orders are sent to machines in order to receive unless they're linked to obscure colors i balance the workload and colors out on the racks to match with delivery deadlines leaving margin for failures in this case i took 10 orders in brown which isn't a common color the order isn't due out for another seven days so i'll pimp two machines and two spools and attack it over the next few days i change colors as i go and open new spools as needed [Music] the goal is to allocate as many orders as possible without unnecessarily opening too many spools of colors that normally don't sell [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i run a morning session to pay down all the finishing debt almost all of our offerings require support removal and finishing and this consumes the majority of my day i think my longest session was five hours that noise you hear in the background is my pelletizer grinding up yesterday's support material to be used as filler in our premium busts i have ergonomic pliers and specialized support removal tools to try to cut down on blisters cuts and cramping i think the only thing in his life worse than removing support is pain my overhead light does a great job of highlighting boogers and defects during finishing the way i see it if i can't spot a problem under this light there's very low likelihood a customer will spot a defect under their house lights [Music] a lot of customers think since everything i sell is 3d printed it just comes off the machine ready to ship that couldn't be further from the truth as i've worked up methods finishing over the years to really make a 3d print look fantastic [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] here i take a break until noon at noon my assistant has pulled all the new orders off the sites and i'll do a quick walk around to see how everything is going it's funny how these printers seem to know when they're being monitored it almost seems like failures are saved until the late hours of the night when no one's looking [Music] everything is doing what it's supposed to so i'll head over to the terminal and send up the new prints [Music] [Music] i tried to save longer jobs run overnight and shorter jobs complete during the day i have a monstrous lookup table in production control that gives wait and time completion for every order it's entered that enables me to do this real time without too much thinking [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is my afternoon finishing session with only one new print cleanup [Music] [Music] so i tend to pay off my maintenance debt in the afternoons this mini needs a new nozzle and sock and i'll save the filament sensor troubleshooting for tomorrow i never treated the sensor as a go no go item so much as an advisory [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] from here i take a break until 1400. [Music] at 1400 i do another walk around harvest any prints and pay off any new finishing debt everything's doing what it's supposed to and i have one new print to finish it's going to take some time [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] i total the time it takes to finish a print in the all-up asking price to account for the labor cost [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] from here i take a break until 15 20. [Music] i'll round up and print all the labels to prep for shipping tomorrow don't mind my desk i'm going to clean it after i finish this video we normally ship on monday wednesday and friday and send off anywhere between 40 and 80 orders depending on the season we're well into this year's christmas rush so we're shipping almost every day now to keep up with all the orders [Music] i find the three screen setup really helps me to optimize the workflow along with the broadband internet [Music] [Music] right [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this administrative overhead's another cost it has to be accounted for in totaling up how much to charge for an item how much time my assistant takes per day in entering orders and how much time it takes me to update all the logs and ultimately box up the order will have to be figured in if you forget to do this you're essentially working for free no good [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] i'll highlight multiples and custom requests so we don't miss them in the pack up this is just another way to try to cut down on human error in the process [Applause] [Music] my assistant has entered in all the rest of the orders for this day so i can go ahead and batch print all the invoices and update the books [Music] it's really convenient being able to select 30 or so new orders and print them all in one shot this will be my last trip out here for the day maintaining a steady schedule is super important for my sanity with the farm so close to my house it could be tempting to keep coming out here through the night to check up on things i'm still working on trying to maintain regular hours [Music] i've got about 15 prints to send up and i also need to capture the loading and power metrics i call this taking a hack on the farm and i'll total up the number of printers committed as well as get a reading on the shop power meter to calculate the amps per hour total kilowatts consumed for the day [Music] [Music] dog [Music] god [Music] do [Music] the power cost of every print is factored into the price [Music] all right last looks before lights out everything is doing what it's supposed to and i can call it a day [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] that's it that's all there is to it today was a good day and the finishing and maintenance debt was [Music] low we took in an above average number of print orders but i was easily able to tackle it so there you have it a day in the life of a print farmer as you can probably tell this is not a turnkey business but it is an honest living making products people want and i really do love every aspect of it if you'd like to join me in this adventure please consider liking subscribing and sharing my content we truly believe consumer 3d printing can be used as a large-scale method of manufacturing and if you'll lend me a bit of your time and attention i'll show you how hit this playlist to start your own journey

Channel: 3DPrintedDebris

Views: 10,390

Keywords: 3DPD, 3D Printer Farm Life, Daily Routine, Prusa, Mini, MK3S, Ender, Creality, CR-10, Business

Id: lm3G6jirREU

Length: 25min 57sec (1557 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021