Make Money 3D Printing | Over $100K Per Year

this right here is an ender3 3D printer it costs about 200 and it's by far the best investment that I ever made hey what's going on you guys and welcome if you're new to this channel sincerely welcome my name is Austin on this channel we basically talk about business Investments and making money online today we're talking about 3D printing and specifically 3D printing as a business and as an investment now I technically went to engineering school but in engineering school they really didn't even teach us much about 3D printing so basically everything that I've learned has been learned through uh just experimenting and honestly through YouTube videos however here we are today I own a 3D printing company and it's done pretty well we do anywhere between five and thirty thousand dollars a month in revenue and we are continuing to grow now 3D printing for some people most people just think 3D printing is for prototyping however that is no longer the case with a very cheap 3D printer you can make totally functional Parts you can sell them you can sell designs you can sell files you can sell your prints and today we're going to talk about that and we're diving right in so let's jump into it now in this video we're talking mostly about the business and investment side of 3D printing so I'll put a bunch of time stamps up either here or here and you can go ahead and Skip to whatever action you want but let's start right from the beginning so really there's two basic types of 3D printers there is resin and fdm fdns fdm stands for fuse deposition modeling and basically fdm is probably the common one that you see most where there's a nozzle with plastic and an extrudes plastic out in layers and layers until you have your finished shape the other one is resin and now resin uses a liquid resin you pour it into a vat and then there is either a light or a laser that slowly solidifies that resin and makes what is usually very small highly detailed objects in this video I'll talk mostly about fdm printing because fdm printing is what I use and it's what most people around the industry that I work in use and prefer to have their parts made from again like I said resin is mostly used for tiny very small highly detailed intricate projects I'll put a couple examples of them up here so you can see the difference so the thing that I get asked most is pretty much always how much does one of these machines cost people come in they see the cool machines they're running they look like they're doing crazy fancy things and people just say wow how much does that cost and the truth is is that the cost of machines really varies however it is worth noting that you can get a machine for around 200 US dollars which is crazy cheap considering what these machines are capable of these days the 3D printing industry has advanced so fast making things affordable for everyone at 200 US dollars plus maybe 10 or 15 dollars per kilogram of plastic filament uh really it's a no-brainer if you're thinking about getting into 3D printing I absolutely do recommend it it is a it's a great hobby but B it's also great as an investment or as a business opportunity so yes I definitely recommend getting into it the 200 printer is more than capable of getting you started with something that is completely functional and up and running now on the other end of things obviously you can spend as much as you want on a 3D printer typical range is anywhere between one thousand and twenty thousand dollars for a pretty good unit although again they can get up to two hundred thousand dollars or more but for most people they don't need those specialty machines so next up is how much can you charge for your service and again the answer is that it depends it depends on a lot of things number one is your experience number two is what printers you're using number three is how much filament it's going to use all of these variables come into effect so let's just jump into this a little bit more the projects basically go one of two ways number one is that someone already has the files and they simply just send you the files and you send them to the 3D printer and you let the 3D printer do its thing and you just charge them based on the printing service now these projects are great because all you have to do is set up the file send it to the 3D printer and the 3D printer does literally all of the works so it may take you anywhere from five to twenty minutes to set up the 3D print however then it might just go ahead and print for eight hours and during that time you're making money and you don't have to actually be doing anything you're not trading your time for money while that printer is running which is excellent that's what I mostly love about 3D printing however on the other side if someone just sends you files and they need them 3D printed it's a pretty competitive space and it's growing more and more every day the more people get 3D printers and the cheaper they become and the easier it is to learn how to do it so just take note that while you do have to come up with your own pricing if someone is just sending you the files and you're simply printing them there is going to be a price ceiling at which you can do that and that price ceilings can be based on the competitive market that you're in so for example this camera planter right here takes about 10 hours to print you wouldn't be able to charge someone 200 for that if you already have the files because someone might be able to print it for as low as 50 dollars but nonetheless once you have that file you send it to the printer the printer does all of the work so it's a pretty easy 50 if that's what you did charge for that again when I do my pricing everything is 100 completely Project based and the reason is because there's so many variables when it comes to 3D printing there's things like how strong it needs to be meaning how much infill or how much material do I need to use how many perimeter layers do I need to use um I could go on and on but again if you're in the pre if you're in the 3D printing space you know what I'm talking about there's just so many variables that come into play so most pricing I typically do is just all 100 complete Project based pricing but to give you a rough idea you could probably charge anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars to print something like this little camera planter right here which brings us to number two number two is if someone needs the design work and the printing done now this is a whole different story so for example before when we said something like this could be between twenty and fifty dollars to 3D prints uh if someone needed this designed it's a whole different story because now someone is paying for your service to actually go ahead and design that product and that is another competitive advantage that you might have is the ability to design this now something like this is a pretty simple design that can be made in either Fusion 360 or SolidWorks or maybe even tinkercad again if you're watching this with no 3D printing experience well those aren't going to make a lot of sense but basically something like this is pretty easy to design however not all that many people in the 3D printing Community know how to do the design work there's a lot of people that like just taking the files and printing them for money therefore I would highly recommend learning how to actually do the design work if you're interested in 3D printing as a business because you'll get more bang for your buck now when it comes to the design work people typically charge anywhere from say thirty dollars to seventy five dollars an hour depending on the level of expertise needed for that specific project so things can range for example this camera planter right here would be a pretty simple design but if someone approaches you and they say hey I have this really expensive patent I need this really specific product made it's going to take an expert to actually design it and again that's a whole different story but when it comes to basic design work you can pretty much gauge somewhere around 30 to probably fifty dollars per hour for actually doing that design work in programs like Fusion 360 or SolidWorks if you don't know what I'm talking about I'll link those below so that you can check them out so let's talk about how to really make money 3D printing now we've already covered the two basic options which is 3D printing as a service and then 3D printing as a service can be broken down into those two subcategories which is a either someone just sends you the files and you print those or B someone hires you to do the actual design work you then design and then print the product for them now 3D printing as a service is a great option it's a great place to get started and it's a really good way to learn how to do it however 3D printing as a service is a little bit difficult to scale because let's say every day you have something new that you have to design and print and make changes to and do revisions until it's perfect it can just be a lot of work quite frankly so unless you're charging a premium for that service it's tough to scale that business and make a lot of money however if you're just looking to make an extra 20 or 50 or 100 bucks a day 3D printing as a service is a great option number two in my most recommended way to make money 3D printing is to open up a store whether that be a Shopify store or an Etsy store personally I recommend doing an Etsy store but if you make prints and you sell them on Etsy it's a fantastic way that anyone can get in and make money with very little experience I have a link below to how we set up our shop and have been super successful with that I highly recommend checking that out if you're interested in getting into 3D printing the biggest Advantage with 3D printing on Etsy is that you're 3D printing the same object over and over so for example if I was selling these camera Planters right here well thankfully when someone goes ahead and they order one of those it's just the exact same object so there's no design work involved I could say stock up on 10 of them if I needed to and then when someone orders I can simply just send that order away or see let's say you're selling a ton of them you could even Outsource the work and you could hire someone else say hey I need 10 of these camera Planters how much does it cost for you to do it because if you don't want to have say 10 or 20 3D printers you can simply build up this passive income stream that way the third way to make money 3D printing is to sell your files let's say that you get into 3D printing you buy that affordable 200 level 3D printer once you get the hang of it you start designing your own files now once you have those files designed you can actually sell those files those files can be sold on a variety of websites the most common ones are CG Trader and a website called Cults 3D lots and lots of people buy what's called dot STL files so if you are interested in doing the design aspect definitely definitely consider selling your files or licensing out your files the reason it's so powerful is because there's no extra work required it's basically passive income once you have the file made if someone buys the file you upload it to the website the website will then send it to the person who bought the file a great great way to make make money and then it goes full circle so for example if someone said hey could you 3D print for me uh maybe like a coat hanger a random object like that you could say yeah no problem here's how much it costs you could then do the design print that for that customer and then upload that design to a website where people could buy it forever and therefore just making you more and more passive income if you had say 50 or 100 designs online then people were buying uh super good way to make money and finally the last way to make money 3D printing is to sell your prints to what are basically Distributors so if you are printing something that you think is viable to be in a store or on a shelf what you can do is you can go find Distributors you can then Supply those Distributors with your 3D prints and have those Distributors sell it to stores and places like that a little bit more of an advanced way to do it and you would have to have probably multiple 3D printers to be able to scale your business in a way that you can actually Supply product it has to be finished product so you have to really know what you're doing to make a quality product for this I don't really recommend this unless you have lots of 3D printers lots of experience lots of knowledge and really reliable turnaround times but there we go we just went over four really great ways to make money 3D printing so the question of can you 3D print full-time absolutely you absolutely can is a completely viable business option in fact I really encourage if you're someone who likes doing design work if you're someone who likes tinkering taking things apart experimenting with things 3D printing is fantastic even if you just do it as a hobby however yes as a business the answer is yes you can 3D print full-time you just have to know what you're doing and set up your revenue streams properly again I highly recommend using Etsy do 3D printing as a service get used to how it works get used to designing files working with clients and then try and expand your business from there next I want to talk about the cons of 3D printing because 3D printing is not Hall sunshine and rainbows anyone out there who's watching this video who currently does 3D printing probably knows what's coming up next the bad things about 3D printing number one is it takes forever some prints uh some prints literally take 20 to 30 hours to do so people think when they ask you to 3 print something that's going to be a like 20 minute job it's not it may take 20 minutes to load the file to the printer if they already have that file but that file might take anywhere from say five hours to up to even 100 hours we've done a couple prints at around 200 hours of 3D printing and now the issue with that is that what if a print fails if you're new to 3D printing you should know that prints can fail and if you're experienced with 3D printing then I can pretty much guarantee that you've had prints failed before there's a lot of settings there's a lot of things that you need to learn how to do to get right your supports there's different materials there's different temperatures prints can fail and the unfortunate thing is it sometimes prints fail near the end of a print so for example if you're doing a 100 hour print and you had a print fail 90 hours in well that really sets you back not necessarily on cost because filament cost is actually pretty cheap on the contrary to what people think filament cost is cheap if you order a lot of filaments or even if you order a little bit of filament using things like Amazon or all the companies out there now that are selling filament around one kilogram of filament cost anywhere between 10 and 20 dollars which is quite cheap because that one kilogram of filament will last you at least a day or two if you're printing consecutively so if you're charging say a hundred dollars a day and you go through twenty dollars a day in filament that's some pretty good margins con number two is customer expectations now uh this one is tough because basically all you have to do is assume that nobody knows anything about 3D printing and that you're gonna have to explain to all of your customers how 3D printing Works what I mean by this is that you get a lot of requests from people that say things like hey I lost this part to this dryer or this Appliance could you please uh design and 3D print a new one and then I'll go ahead and I'll ask them well how much is a new one from the store and they'll say a new one from the store is going to cost me sometimes people say something like ten dollars and so people expect you to sit down for an hour or two on the computer design a custom part and then 3D print it and they want to pay less than ten dollars so you just have to understand all aspects to 3D printing before you quote customers because yes if someone needs a super small part printed can you do that yes you can however it's not always as easy as customer think and you need to be able to explain that to people and you need to know that yourself before you take on those projects and con number three con number three is simply it's a lot harder than it looks a lot of people think that you can just go and order that basic machine from Amazon set it up within five minutes press a button and start printing whatever you want I'm here to tell you that that is just not the case there's a lot more to it than that you need to learn how to use a few different software packages before you can even send files to your 3D printer so just be aware that if you are jumping into this thinking that you're going to make a quick Buck 3D printing there is going to be a learning curve to how to properly operate your machine and make things that work so the final question is should you start a 3D printing business in 2021 and the answer is yes yes you should if you're the type of person that likes building things and tinkering and maybe taking things apart and creating things from scratch things like that if you want to start a 3D printing business just to make money a bad idea it's probably not going to work out because you have to have the patience to learn how to do things and you quite frankly just have to want to learn how to do those things because some of it is super boring some of it is tedious you might spend 10 hours doing a design and 3D printing it and it might just come out a Big Blob of plastic that doesn't work so you have to have patience to learn how to do things properly so yes I highly recommend starting a 3D printing business in 2021 if you're the type of person that enjoys actually doing it so I think that's it for this video I've answered most of the questions that I get regularly about 3D printing and 3D printing as a business if you have any other questions feel free to drop them in the comments and I will get back to you additionally in the description of this video there is the link to starting an Etsy shop as well as links to all the printers that I recommend so I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Austen Hartley

Views: 781,786

Keywords: 3d printing, money, business, investment, 2020, 2021, make, how to, print farm, uncle Jesse, at home, etsy, passive income, Ender 3, Profit, how to make money 3d printing, 3d printer, should I buy a 3D printer, which 3d printer, how much does 3d printing cost, start a 3d printing business, 6 ways, prusa

Id: gKDDoSryluo

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021