Many people bought 3D printers in order
to print personal protection equipment
during the pandemic but now that that's
faded a bit, what do you print?
Well how about printing something that
you can actually sell and help pay for
your 3D printer. I've been doing it for
years. I'll explain how I got started and
how you can to making money with your 3D
printer, right here at Filament Friday.
My whole journey started when I need a
clip for the valance of our vertical
blinds in our living room. I had broke
one and rather than go out and buy one I
just took a good one scanned it in
turned it into a 3d object, 3d printed it,
snapped it in place, and it worked great.
My sister came by saw what I did and
said can you print me a couple I need
them. And then while they were printing she
looked it up and said hey did you know
that they sell these on eBay? And they
were a lot higher than what it cost me
to print them. So I threw a few up on
eBay just to see if I could sell them
and I sold like a dozen of them within
like 30 days. It wasn't big money. I only
made like a dollar a clip but there's
like twelve dollars in my pocket that I
didn't have and I thought what else
could I sell? Then it occurred to me I
had created a mailbox flag for my
Rubbermaid mailbox that was a video I
did early on in the channel. And it
worked fantastic and I did it because I
couldn't find a mailbox flag anywhere.
The only thing I could do was buy a
whole new mailbox which I didn't want to
do. Well that flag turned out to be a
great seller. I put it up on eBay and I
sold like 25 in the first week. It was
incredible how many people needed that
flag. And I was making a dollar or two
dollars a piece so that was like
twenty-five to fifty dollars a week I
was making with this mailbox flag and it
pretty much stayed at that rate for
quite a while. And then I hooked up with
someone on Amazon and they were selling
ten times that amount buying them from me
I also allowed them to print some of
them so we were both making money off the
flags. By the time I was done I was
selling a thousand flags a year and that
built my print farm. This flag is what
built my print farm and with that money
I was able to pay for all the printers,
paid for the filament and also tools and
things to fix my printers because when
you're running a print farm things are
going to break. And eventually I got to the point where I was buying filament in bulk like
a pallet full. In fact we'd buy a couple
pallets to get enough filament plus
at a price that we can make more money.
And that's what turned into the Filament
Friday filament because the filament
Friday filament is basically an overflow of
those pallets that we bought for the
print farm. So see there's a lot of ways
you can make money with your 3d printer
if you just get started.
The biggest thing you've got to find is
something that you need, that fixes a
problem that you have. And once you've
proved that the design works then you
can try and sell it to others.
The flag also becomes a great test print
on the v2 the Ender 3 v2 or the cr6
they've both been printing them so I can
see how consistent they can print a flag
and they both do a great job. That glass
bed works beautifully so it's a test
print I don't really advertise but I use
it all the time when I get printers.
Another thing that you need to be aware
of is don't go grab someone's
Thingiverse file, start selling it and
say oh look what I've done, because it's
really not right. You should contact them
and see if they're willing to sell it. Or
give them a royalty. Now see I used to
share the flag file in my original video
but I had someone actually grab the file
and sell it on Etsy 50 cents less than
me and was stealing sales and I thought
you know what, that's not right because I
didn't release it commercial. I released
it for people to use personally but not
sell it. And he fought me on it.
Well eventually I got him taken down at
Etsy because he was using a
copyrighted design. My buddy Clayton
over at the Uncle Jessy channel, he made
a video where he said he made $18,000
selling an accessory to an xbox
controller. It was someone else's design
but he worked out an arrangement with
them so he did it all the right way and
still making $18,000. I'll put a link to
his video in the description below. But
the idea is to find something people
need that is the key. I had a product
that didn't do well. I had at the back of my
shed, a rack where I could hang the
paddles from my kayaks. I thought it was
great. I put those up on eBay thinking
these are awesome they're gonna sell a
ton. I didn't sell a single
one! I ended up giving them to friends and
they thought they were great but they
said they probably wouldn't have bought one.
Okay so there's some products that just
aren't a hit even though it worked good
for me and good for them, it just wasn't
something you go out shopping for. And
there's other benefits from
printing something that sells because
you're printing all the time. So this is
like a fifth-generation flag. I'm
constantly changing or improving it and
also you find settings you can do in
your profiles to make the prints come
out better. Nice and smooth and flat, no
warping, nice smooth finish on the bottom,
good bed level. All that came from
printing flags. I've also learned how to
fix the 3d printers because they're
printing all the time. I learned all the
shortcomings like the PTFE tube that the
last 20 millimeters kind of burns on
these things after many hours of
printing. So there's a lot of benefit for
printing something besides just making
money from selling it. But I also love
about this is no one can complain about
me buying filament or tools or
accessories for my 3d printers because
I'm paying for it. So I hope this helps
you. Let me know in the comments below
your ideas of how you're gonna try to
make money with your 3d printer. If you
like what I'm doing here maybe check out
some of the videos popping up and if
nothing else click on that CHEP logo and
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episode. I'll see you next time right
here at Filament Friday.
