making money from 3d printing?

[Feign]

As an alternate to Davo's suggestion. If you don't like the lines, do some postprocessing. A careful acetone vapor bath or even just sanding and painting a piece after it's printed can absolutely make it consumer grade.

I think you've gotten yourself into the mindset that if you can't sell something directly out of your printer, then it's not worth the time. If you're asking for an affordable desktop 3D printer that makes money all by itself, then you'll be dissapointed. If you look at it as a tool among multiple tools in a craft, then yes it can be a very powerful tool for making you money.

[cipher0]

Thanks, I'm working on printed samples to send out to people now. I'll shoot one to you when they're done.

Okay, thanks.

As an alternate to Davo's suggestion. If you don't like the lines, do some postprocessing. A careful acetone vapor bath or even just sanding and painting a piece after it's printed can absolutely make it consumer grade.

I've talked about acetone "vapor baths", dipping in liquid acetone as well as sandpapering and why they aren't really great in this thread already.

^ Right..

We're still a few years away from "mass manufacturing from our desktops" but the technology is all there.

Who said mass manufacturing? My arguments apply even to unique phone cases, miniature sculptures, etc.

You can always send off the model to shapeways, sculpteo, etc or even overseas to China, Thailand, etc to be mass fabricated. There is always a way..

I don't need a 3d printer and 3d printing myself to make money like that though, which this thread is about.

[MeoWorks]

I think you've gotten yourself into the mindset that if you can't sell something directly out of your printer, then it's not worth the time. If you're asking for an affordable desktop 3D printer that makes money all by itself, then you'll be dissapointed. If you look at it as a tool among multiple tools in a craft, then yes it can be a very powerful tool for making you money.

Well said. Even with VERY expensive pro printers, printed "stuff" will still need to have a little bit of post processing to get a good, clean prototype product. 3D printing is not simply print and sell, probably never will be, you should consider all printed parts to be non sell-able prototypes.

EDIT: Let me rephrase that. Even the prints coming out of the very best printers right now will still need to reworked in some way or form. Earlier in the thread you mentioned that it seems in order to make money from 3D printing, you'll need knowledge from other fields as well. This is very true, nothing is easy in life LOL.

Here's a list of knowledge I've accumulated in my years just sculpting from clay to present day digital sculpting.

-Tools
-Medium of all sorts
-Casting Methods
-Plastics/silicones
-Physics
-Mathematics
-Computer tech and building
-Computer software and troubleshooting
-Electric work
-Electronics
-Hazardous material handling and disposal
-and probably a ton of other things.

In the end one does not simply buy a 3D printer and expect to make major bucks without some sort of other effort. It honestly seems like that's what you're looking for, printing out a perfect piece that will sell right away without any work to it. It won't happen. Sorry. You're into 3D, you should know that gravity does not exist in a 3D environment, if you sculpt a dynamic human sculpt, be prepared to reprint that sculpt at least twice or three times before you get your master copy perfectly the way you want it, with the correct balance etc. Then you have to post process it.

OR you can simply take your first print and cast it to a workable material such as wax and make your adjustments there and then use that wax master to make resin copies. It takes work, but hey, nothing is easy.

I'm just rambling now but it just seems like you expect these printers to be mini factories that'll do all the work for you. It's just a tool