My 3D Printing Farm

in this video i want to give you guys a tour of my 3d printing business so two years ago i came out with this 3d printed exhaust adapter part for the glowforge laser cutter put it on amazon started selling really well then i came out with this six to four inch reducer for a popular fan that started selling well and i came out with the six inch exhaust adapter for the glowforge that started selling well also and what started with two 3d printers evolved into 14 3d printers running full time to keep up with production but all production i don't have any 3d printers here these are my 3d printer graveyard back here all production has moved out of here to other locations so what started as a really fun and exciting journey selling 3d printed parts i became overwhelming having to manage and keep up and pick package and ship all those parts was not what i wanted to be doing so i hired two family members to run and package all the ship package all the parts for me and so i can do what i want to do which is spend more time on the computer designing and coming up with new product ideas so let's head to the first location and i'll show you my setup for how these two parts are made and uh let's go check it out so it's kind of a funny time to give a tour of my business because we're in the middle of transition up until this point we've printed all our parts in pla for the last two years and it's worked great but the summer's been really hot for a lot of states and as our parts get dropped off on someone's doorstep that hot concrete is just baking that part and a lot of these parts have either warped or deformed and last thing i want is a customer to get a part that doesn't fit correctly especially when they're right waiting to get their low forge set up or whatnot so we pulled all our parts off the shelf which is a lot which is kind of a bummer but we've been reprinting all our parts in a higher temperature plastic we've been using petg and that is substantially way better than pla in terms of its heat tolerance so that's been working really well we may end up even moving to abs which will be even a little stronger but so far the petg has been working really well and we're pretty happy with it [Music] alright so this is my 3d printer cabinet so i got this cabinet at ikea and it's been really good to house my 3d printers in i was able to cram six printers in this cabinet uh it actually fits these ender threes perfectly so i like this cabinet because they fit in here really well and then i chose to go with a cabinet because i really want these printers to have a climate controlled environment to print and if you 3d print you know how important that is um so one thing i did is i put weather stripping all around this whole thing to get it a nice uh airtight seal um and then i had this little lock that i put on the outside that kind of keeps the doors pressed tight up against that weather stripping at one time these windows did line up with each bay when it was only four printers but then i changed it to a a three bay six printer set up so they don't line up anymore but it doesn't matter um all right well let's talk about uh the 3d printers a little bit okay this door stays open um if you're familiar with ender 3's you'll know this is a really stock setup i really don't do many modifications at all there's a lot of modifications out there to improve print quality but where i choose to spend most of my time is in the slicer settings this particular part this reducer i've literally literally spent over a hundred hours in the slicer settings fine tuning test printing over and over to not only reduce time in the print but to get the most high quality print and i don't know if you can see that too well but that's coming out pretty dang good but that's what i do i don't really do all these little uh tricks and mods i spend just countless hours in the slicer settings and printing the same part over and over i have the luxury to fine tune that process obviously if you're running services and each part you get is different obviously don't have that luxury probably the biggest thing i did is i moved the extruder from the left side and i moved it to the center uh one thing i was having an issue with is when my spool was turned this way the filament would come in it would take this really sharp turn in and sometimes the filament would snap so i moved it over i laser cut an acrylic plate right here to mount it and this way the filament just comes straight from the roll right into the extruder so that works really well i did these little uh fan shrouds to prevent 3d printing hairs from getting sucked into the fan i was having to clean those pretty regularly so i did that um you can see that each that's funny this one's not labeled here let's go down to this one that one's labeled d that one's labeled c and so i have all the all the printers labeled we got e that one's typically f but i moved a and f recently but so typically it would be a b c d e f and uh that way uh sherry my contractor she can shoot me a text say hey printer a has been having issues and then we can address it that way i know which printer is having issues or whatnot uh i run blue tape i love blue tape especially blue tape that's about three months old brand new blue tape doesn't work that great for me just really use tape that's been printed on a couple hundred times i absolutely love it it works out this has worked really well for petg i said that we might be switching to abs we're probably gonna have to switch to maybe a glass bed uh with abs but it's been working out really well so far um i think that's about it we've i'll say probably the biggest problem we've had is power loss issues uh not power lost to this house power's fine i would just get these random weird issues if one would just stop and it would say power loss like the power's on there is no power loss or one would just randomly stop mid print or a layer line would shift really just weird stuff one guy i found online who said ghost in the machine that's kind of what it feels like there's a ghost in the machine sometimes so that's been kind of weird i am running on a 20 amp outlet which should be sufficient for six 3d printers so i just recently purchased a power conditioner which is supposed to be like a water filter for your power so to get rid of some of the frequencies that might be screwing with some of these printers but other than that they've been they've been working pretty well so typically the process from here is we would grab these parts and you would normally be sticking to the bed but i already broke them off so it was shooting a video so we'd grab the parts we'd set them over here if they just came off of the printer i would let them cool for a while um this is the fan that they go on to but i don't want to test fit them when these are warm because i'm going to get an inconsistent reading so if these are warm i'll let them sit and we'll go back to the 3d printers reset those get those going again after these have settled to room temperature we do hand test and check the fit on every single one of these so we grab one this is the part that it sits on in real life so we'll test fit every single one of them that's a nice tight fit put that down you can see i got these pvc pipes labeled a b c d e f so we just go through every single one test fit it make sure it's a nice tight fit and then put it in its respective pvc pipe the reason why we separate that way is because even though these printers are the same printing the exact same g-code each part comes out a little differently one will be a little more shiny another part might be a little more of a matte finish so it's it's really interesting how that works and i don't want a customer usually people order these in two packs i don't want a customer getting one that's a little flat and one that's a little shiny so we make sure to ship two parts that came from the same printer and this is kind of how we keep these organized so that's kind of the process test fit and then when we get a big sleeve that's ready to go she'll just grab these walk over to the packaging area and then start to uh kind of inspect clean up some of the hairs and then package them too so here also not only check the fitments but also kind of do like a little once over to make sure nothing weird happen there's no wall separation and whatnot so that's kind of how that works um i got four more 3d printers over here in another cabinet walk through here it's kind of tight so hopefully you can see it so not a whole lot going on right here right now so all these are um over there on the packaging uh table all the parts have been taken off but i'll show you kind of how this works same setup i try to keep things very consistent um as i can through all these printer cabinets so we take the part off and we test fit it this is a piece of aluminum that i got machined at a local machine shop so this is the exact size of the part that this actually slides onto so we do our test fit here that's a nice tight fit go through and hand test fit every single one of these that's a nice tight fit and so same process after we test fit the part and we get a big stack of it then carry the stack over to the packaging area so i'll talk a little bit about that but we've been really liking these cabinets so far um i really like that it's nice and temperature controlled the beds are at 60 degrees and so that generates or 60 celsius so that kicks off a nice um keeps a nice warm environment in there and that weather stripping kind of helps keep all the heat locked in there um if we switch to abs which i think we might we might switch to kind of these individual zipper enclosures but we'll see so here we got a whole array of parts that are ready to be inspected uh wipe down sanding if if necessary and then they'd be packaged up so there we do all the test fitting and here there's little hairs that get on the parts as you know if you 3d print and so we'd get a cloth wipe them down maybe a little sandpaper hit them up make sure there's no defects there's no hairs it's very important to me that a customer gets a nice high quality part if they're paying their money for it i want them to get a nice perfect high quality part so we inspect these pretty regular rigorously i can't tell you how many of these we've trashed if there's one little defect on it we'll toss it so i want the customer to get a nice quality part so we'll inspect them here we'll just throw them in a poly bag wrap a few coats of bubble wrap around throw in a box get the the tape if you guys are looking for a awesome tape dispenser u-line is the way to go hit the box and then we'd ship all these boxes we put them all in a larger box that would then go uh to amazon so obviously over here too a little insert we throw in there product labels slap the product label on the box ship it off to amazon so that takes care of it for this uh this location this facility whatever you want to call it but let's head over to the next location uh where i print that exhaust adapter part and i'll show you how that one works so one of the most difficult things for me on this journey has been delegation um i really needed to delegate and outsource um as much as i could because it was just getting too much for me to handle but it's my baby i've i've created it i've been with it from the beginning no one knows it better than me right and so it's really hard to let go of that and entrust it to someone who hasn't been there the whole way and the people i hired do not have 3d printing experience so the problem that i had to solve was how do i create a system how do i create a 3d printing system that is set up so well and so streamlined that i can just pass it on to anyone and they'd be able to pick it up they would know what to look for they would know how to test fit the parts how to inspect them and how to package them properly and so i spent probably a good month designing workflow getting everything as efficient and streamlined as possibly could and to kind of fool proof uh the system so that when i pass it off to someone i would have a little bit more confidence that they're going to be successful all right well we're here at the final location where this part is made this is the original part that i started printing with so i'll show you the cabinet for this one again same setup as the ones you saw before same ikea cabinet this is actually two individual cabinets that i put together at one time i had six printers in here but right now four is enough to keep up with production i had to take two out to help with the reducers because those take a lot longer to print um but again same setup we actually just recently moved this part to abs we were printing in pet g but they were coming out really stringing so uh we tried abs and it's a lot less stringing so that's been great i don't want the people i hired to have to do a bunch of sanding and waste time doing that we did have to ditch the blue tape for the bed and we moved to uh just some adhesive bed that we have to lay down on top that's been working well i'll show you a little bit of the the process or the workflow for how these work so typically again like the other one the reducers we'd take them all off kind of stack them here at a stage and then once they cool down to room temperature then we take her apart again we have the same part that we machined from a machine shop to the exact diameter of the glowforge so we just put our part on okay just uh test fit it make sure it fits okay then after that if it needs any sanding any sharp edges or stringing hit it down here maybe a quick wipe down on here and then typically we'd have bags in here we'd bag it up through a little label on there and then we have this box here so this this cart is specifically designed for uh printing this part um i designed it specifically for this workflow the other reducer cart that i showed you that's specifically designed for the reducer workflow so after we get this bagged up and labeled then we drop it in the box you can see i got a bunch of parts in there ready to go and so we drop one in and then we'd hit our little ticker counter that way we know how many parts are in there and we don't have to recount our parts and then that way my contractor knows how many parts um they're giving me when they drop them off and then i can give that same number off to amazon to let them know how many is coming in our inventory i will say shipping these or selling these on amazon has been amazing as opposed to selling them on etsy at first son on essie was super fun at first to start was really exciting but then having to drive to the post office every day and drop off parts was overwhelming so now we just take a big batch a box of 100 or so ship it to amazon and each time someone places an order it ships from amazon not me um that way i don't have to run the post office every day so that's nice so i think maybe some final thoughts or recommendations if you are starting the print farm or if you have one um one keep some smart spare parts on hand uh you never know when something's gonna go bad or go wrong on your printers and it might happen to all your printers at the same time and you want to minimize down time so have some spare parts on hand i have some spare filament on hand i try to have about two weeks of filament on hand right now i've been switching back and forth so i'm not really i've been playing with my different brand or the type so now that this white abs is good i'm probably gonna stock up a couple weeks worth so last year 2020 we were printing fine everything was great and encoded happened and i couldn't get my filament for three weeks so now i try to keep a little on hand in case something happens i would highly recommend not skimping on your brand of filaments i personally feel like it's way better to spend a little extra on a good quality filament i started with cheap filament you got to start with cheap filament to make money at first that makes sense but then i've returned so many just brittle rolls of filament and looking back all the time and money i wasted buying filament having to return it just get a good quality filament that you like and you're happy with so those are some recommendations off the cuff one last thing i would say is number your printers um i so i have a name again these are name the same a b c d a name is fine but i would also put a number somewhere else write a sharpie on your power supply get a little label maker or something so my my numbering system was the letters i did like a through m at first but then i took a through d and delegated those two extensions and i took the other ones and delegated those to reducers and name those a through d and then took another group and labeled those or named those a through b and now i don't know who the original a is and if one of my contractors say hey there's an issue with a i'm like okay is that is that the very first printer i got or is that like the eighth printer i got and so i wish i would have numbered the printers that way i know okay this is the first or second printer i ever bought it's the oldest one i have maybe i should just replace it or do a complete overhaul so i'd recommend doing that um overall uh this been kind of a crazy wild journey it's been fun i would say that hiring people has absolutely saved my sanity uh last year in 2020 we sold a total of 3 000 parts 28.50 to be exact and then this year 2021 will price sell about 5 000 parts and that doesn't include all the parts that we printed that maybe didn't fit right or came out bad so that's a lot of parts and hiring people to keep up with production uh has just been a lifesaver both for me to get my time back and spend my time coming up with new product ideas and then also just to keep my sanity these days i try to spend my time working on new product ideas and i'm also kind of a 3d printer maintenance technician so i'll drive over here do some maintenance things like that that's not always the funnest thing to do but it has been really rewarding uh to be able to hire other people and pay them be a source of income for someone else so that's been really sweet and they're family members too so it's it's kind of cool so i hope this video was a help to you guys if you have any questions comments or suggestions for for me or whatnot i'd love to hear from you in the comments below let me know i'll catch you guys in the next video

Channel: Martinson Manufacturing

Views: 197,069

Keywords: 3d printing business, 3d printing farm, 3d printing for beginners, 3d print service, selling 3d printed items, 3d printed parts, amazon, etsy, things ive learned, entrepreneurship, small business, glowforge

Id: 7eKa1voxnz4

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021