I bought a 3-D printer two years ago. My goal was to create a medical training product that was modeled after a real medical device. After finding the right people and learning the basics, I’ve successfully printed and sold about 200 of these products for a profit of about $50 each. That’s a total profit of about $10,000 just over two years, not bad. After subtracting $2000 for the cost of the printer and professional CAD services, I’m left with $8000 and everything’s pure profit moving forward. I’m literally printing money. I’ve noticed that there’s a potential goldmine here in this industry. I believe 3-D printing is more than a hobbyist pursuit and really gives people the pure power of creativity and manufacturing to solve problems within niche hobbies. There seems to be a million unorganized designs for very specific uses floating around the internet and most of them are free. Just finding them is very difficult. I think there are several tech companies that needs to be created to solve a lot of the issues surrounding this market.
There are quite a few problems to solve in 3-D printing market. One problem is people finding a design they want but have no access to a 3-D printer. Most websites seem untrustworthy that offer 3D print services and are expensive. There’s some places that is supposed to help you find an owner willing to print something for you but the incentive is really weak and will result in frustration. Although the cost of the materials is minimal, the cost of a printer is pretty high. Also the amount time required to properly calibrate a perfect print, ensuring the files are 3D printer friendly, troubleshooting quality issues, and collecting payment and shipping for an item makes it a difficult business model with too many variables. Even people willing pay full price for a print will run into more issues.
Although a lot of 3-D designs are free to download and print, many contain licensing conditions that do not allow commercial selling. I think this is pretty stupid. If someone designs something and says anyone can download, print, and use it, but they can’t sell it. What are the people that don’t have 3-D printers supposed to do? They have to ask someone with a 3-D printer to print one for them for free. This lack of incentive will deter owners who will want at minimum the cost of materials. But even asking for that cost will violate the non-commercial license for a lot of the designs in the internet. If it’s on the internet and free to download, then the designer should have some way of receiving a royalty. Also, the person 3-D printing is not selling the print, they’re selling a service so should be exempt from non-commercial aspect of the contract when printing for another person. That’s where another tech company can come in and assist with contracts and licensing.
The final problem I see is the sheer volume of designs out there and no way to search for them. I think there needs to be a library of some sort or method of searching that makes it easier to find for the specific purpose a person is looking for. This almost feels like doing a patent search on an idea I came up with. It’s completely overwhelming going through thousands of things trying to find something that’s exactly the same as what I’m thinking. So definitely a 3-D print design Amazon store would be nice.
So those are the few companies that nobody is making right now. It’s a great way to solve a market problem and I believe 3-D printing will revolutionize manufacturing by bringing the production back to the states. I’m very excited about this next product and will probably get a second printer soon to keep up with demand. Thanks for reading!