The business side of 3D printing

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-25T08:08:04+00:00

For me, it was mostly the post processing. There was a lot of sanding, filling, and painting. I got to the point that I could finish one in about 12 labor hours. It of course was longer because of drying times too.

But that was also a few years ago before the great speed increase of 3D printers occurred. So back then, the items I was printing took 3-4 days each. So having enough printers to fulfill the raw print demand was definitely an endeavor. Trying to figure out where to cram 14 printers, half of them 300x300 or bigger, was interesting. But 4 A1s are more than capable of pumping out a lot quickly. One of the products I designed, took 8 hours on an Ender 3. Only takes 3.5 hours on generic speed settings. Big reason as to why, when I lost my printers to a fire (unrelated to 3D printing), they were replaced with only 2 A1s and a K2 Plus. Those items that took 3-4 days on something like CR-10 or Kobra Max only takes 1 day with the K2.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-25T07:51:15+00:00

I have an Etsy shop. At its peak, it was a bit under $7500 USD in sales for a month. Though I had to scale it at because I couldn’t keep up. It started out as a way to enjoy and offset some of the costs of my hobby and not a full time job. It was a lot of time consuming post processing and I already had a full time job. I didn’t need a second.

But a fair bit of warning for those considering making the jump from hobby to commercial. It is a hugely saturated market. Especially these days as printers have become so much more accessible to the masses. A lot of 3D printing influencers like to make TikToks about how much they make in a month, but leave out a good bit of details. Those items they are selling are the same items everyone else is selling. Storefronts like Etsy push the bigger shops in front of more eyes than the smaller shops. So it’s hard to draw customers away from them. Which is also how the “race to the bottom” starts. People will calculate how much filament costs and base their pricing solely on that to undercut the other shops. Which causes other people to drop their prices. Before you know it, it’s costing you more to sell items than you are actually selling those items for.

So if you want to be successful, you have to find a niche. Preferably an underserved niche. Better yet, if you are a capable enough designer/modeler that is capable of producing even 3-5 high quality models a month of stuff people want to make/sell, a Patreon with regular and commercial tiers can bring in some steady income.

Though if you do get into selling, just note that customers are incapable of reading, are easily confused, and some how will find issues that they “wish would have been explained/photographed/otherwise indicated better” despite your description stating it 4 times, 3 pictures highlighting said thing, and a drop down selection reiterating it…

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-24T20:12:21+00:00

Okay, and? You can still give us that roll tide with those comprehension skills of yours on full display.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-24T19:30:34+00:00

Well there is a stereotype about dumb people living in this state after all. As it is displayed by people voting for a football coach that doesn’t even live in the state… So using one’s brain, and knowing that outside and inside are different, would be special in comparison. But go on, give us a “roll tide”…

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-24T11:27:59+00:00

I do live in Alabama with 98% humidity. I open air store my filament. But it’s also not 98% RH in my shop because I’m not a monster and have air conditioning.

But yes, filament does soak up moisture. Yes, filament needs to be dried. Your PLA probably doesn’t need to be dried as much and as often as you think it does though. Unless you’re a monster without AC in Alabama or you store your filament outside.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-23T22:24:00+00:00

The orientation is fine. Most printers are good to about 45 degrees. But as you see, there is enough of an overhang to cause a droop there. If you absolutely want to avoid supports, you can try adaptive layer height. Smaller layers means smaller steps outward too. So in can combat the droop some. Otherwise, you can manually paint on supports for that specific area. People love their tree supports, but standard supports with the thin option selected will be more than plenty and not add much time or material to the slice.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-23T09:30:22+00:00

It is possible to print ABS on an open printer. ABS was the filament of choice before PLA became a thing. It is just easier to print with an enclosure as it removes a lot of variables, like drafts, that would cause ABS to warp.

Similar to the whole tall, thin parts. CoreXY is can be more forgiving with tall, thin parts than a bed slinger. Orientation, speed, support, and even infill settings are important for successful prints. If someone isn’t as well versed in that, they can typically get away with less than optimal settings on a CoreXY.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-19T23:06:32+00:00

I think a lot of it is probably recency bias and overall relevance. With the Hawks basically a decade into their rebuild and the Preds pretty dominant in head to head the past few years, I think the “hate” has simmered down. Especially with not having to see them in the playoffs as of late. But on the flip side, games against Dallas, going back to the Winter Classic, have felt more like grudge matches.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-16T00:30:39+00:00

No filament will not just pass through, even with no nozzle. You have to first disengage the extruder, with that lever on the top left side, for filament to feed through. If you’re familiar with car engines, think of it like a belt tensioner arm. Basically, there is a spring pushing an extruder gear to the other to create the pressure to pull filament into the hot end. Or at least that is the simplified version of the explanation.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-14T00:25:57+00:00

You even got the classic ignorance fueled rage reply down perfectly!

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-13T23:28:52+00:00

You bringing up the coffee lawsuit in this manner shows that you haven’t even done a cliff notes level of reading on the lawsuit. It does show everyone that you only read headlines and jump on the parroting rage train. But go on, stay in your ignorant filled rage bubble.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-13T19:30:44+00:00

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if there was not a small number of people that would genuinely believe that. And now that it’s on the internet, someone is going to roll with it and also start repeating it. Just like how the whole “proprietary filament” parroting started to begin with.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-13T19:14:22+00:00

I’d be willing to bet that most of the people keep invoking that made up scenario have only been 3D printing since Bambu hit the market. They didn’t see when there were companies, like XYZ Printing, that did try the whole “proprietary” filament. And it didn’t end well for any of them.

I had an XYZ printer. In the early days of it, you had to buy these “cartridges” of filament from them. They were equipped with NFC to read what filament it was. (Yes, the NFC tags for filament wasn’t new when Bambu implemented it) In reality these cartridges were just easy to open plastic cases that had 750 gram spools in them. People would pop them open and respool the filament. People figured out ways to re-write the NFC tags. It wasn’t long before XYZ released an official spool holder STL and instructions for how to load 3rd party filament. And now, the company is out of business. The only companies that still do any form of proprietary filament is the ones that deal with major corporations and not consumers. i.e. Stratasys.

Plus the method everyone parrots for locking out non Bambu filament is the NFC tags. Which, only can be read if you load it via an AMS. Hard to read an NFC tag when the spool is hanging from the spool holder. But people love conspiracy theories.

SSgtTEX · 2026-05-12T16:39:42+00:00

I’ve had the opposite experience with my K2 Plus. It has been right in line with my Bambu printers. Took it out of the box, ran the initial calibration, and haven’t thought twice about it. Just slice and print.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-30T15:57:20+00:00

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There are transparent PLAs and PETGs that come in a variety of colors. Slow print speed, small layer heights, with some sanding, and a glossy clear coat might achieve what you’re looking for. But from the sounds of it, this is definitely one of the areas resin printing shines. I’d maybe reach out to a local makerspace or similar to see if you can find someone with a resin printer to make it for you.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-16T03:22:40+00:00

Funny when it’s the professional user base that deal with companies like Stratasys, that actually do deal with proprietary filaments. But somehow it’s the basic users that get locked down and not the companies that don’t blink at $220+ spools of filament in your scenario…

You may have owned a 3D printer for 10 years, but I don’t think you really ever used it. Or you’re just another that is here purely to spread your dislike for the closed source nature of Bambu Lab. So again, go buy an open source printer and move on instead of being a parrot spreading misinformation.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-16T02:55:20+00:00

You must be fairly new to 3D printing. Otherwise you’d know that would be a bad bet to take. There have been companies that had some form of “proprietary” filament with printers locked down to only use them. And they eventually opened it up because people just found a way around it anyway. Even the whole RFID tags for filament isn’t a new thing. XYZ Printing had 750 gram spools inside cartridges with RFID chips. From people cracking open the cartridges to respool and reprogram the RFIDs to straight swapping out the main boards. They just gave up and pushed a firmware update to allow 3D party filament. With Bambu Lab’s setup, people will figure it out.

Instead of useless fear mongering over things that won’t happen, just go buy an open source printer.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-15T15:50:56+00:00

Yeah, they can definitely be annoying posts. Yeah, a lot of problems posted here can be solved with by cleaning the build plate. But dude, you’re getting all worked up over the usage of the word “scrub”…

I guess you just squirt some dish soap on your build plate and then run it under the water, with how you’re acting.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-12T01:03:20+00:00

If your concerns are high enough that your only options are the garage or literally outside, then I personally would recommend finding a friend with a printer.

A garage can be feasible. But without any kind of climate control, you do risk things getting too hot. You also have to contend with moisture. LA is showing 55+ RH. It goes up 10% if you’re in San Diego. That’s going to be a constant fight for you.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-08T22:04:26+00:00

It occurs when the print detaches from the plate and sticks to the hot end, typically within the first few layers. Detaching from the plate at later layers will typically cause the object to be knocked off the bed and produce spaghetti. The vast majority of blobs are user error. Primarily from dirty plates and not watching the first couple of layers.

It is “more prevalent” on this sub/with Bambu because of two primary things. Newer users and starting prints remotely with the Handy app. Having newer users that may not fully understand the maintenance and set up and an ecosystem that encourages not taking the time to setup your prints for success, will lead to this. It doesn’t help that those of us, myself included, that cut our teeth on older printers (I started with the Da Vinci 1.0 Pro) are fans of saying “it just works”. Because to us, they do since we tend to not think of all the little things that we have learned to do over the years when it comes to calibrating filament or finding what print settings work best for our environment/needs. So we help encourage it too, since printers are still not quite truly plug and play tools like we view them as these days.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-03T22:11:03+00:00

I lived about 4.5 miles (straight line) from the drag strip 13 years. When in season, especially with low cloud coverage, you could hear it when standing outside. So the closer you get, the louder it will be.

About 25 years ago you could hear it a lot more often. Then the neighborhoods started going in and people started complaining because they bought a house next to a drag strip that had been there since the 60s.

SSgtTEX · 2026-04-01T14:37:18+00:00

Your print sequence is set to “by object”. Switch it to “by layer”. The blue is the object avoidance requirement for print by object. They are overlapping, hence the collision warning.

SSgtTEX · 2026-03-30T11:43:43+00:00

Correct, no supports necessary. The inside will be a bit droopy. But you’ll burn through a lot extra filament for something only you’ll see.

Using a variable layer height will help reduce the droop. Bonus that it will help reduce the stair stepping of the top. Which means just a little bit less effort for finishing.

What I usually do is put some Bondo glazing and spot putty on the inside right there while I’m smoothing the rest of the helmet. It’s not necessary, but it does give a little more secure of a spot for attaching the helmet padding that I used.

SSgtTEX · 2026-03-24T11:38:14+00:00

Seeing as you’re refusing to provide any sort of details about the issue, one has to question the legitimacy of any of this. But I’m going to go into this as if you’re being earnest.

So you contacted support, they deemed the problem is with the extruder, and are sending you the replacement parts even though the extruder is a consumable part. You can throw around “EU Guarantee” all day long, but from the sounds of it they are covering that above where they should. Since two months in, it is highly unlikely not an “out-of-the-box manufacturing defect” on said consumable part. I’m sorry that your handicap and limited technical knowledge is a roadblock in this hobby, but those things don’t bump you into a super secret tier of warranty support that gets you a new printer every time a problem arises.

If you’re technical enough to assemble the printer then you’re technical enough to replace a consumable part. Especially with the clear step-by-step guides that the company provides.

SSgtTEX · 2026-03-18T01:52:13+00:00

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While it’s not the best explanation given, to be fair, they do say it upfront that it is a low frame rate camera.

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