Teleportation

If you haven’t caught wind yet, 3D printing is the new hot thing. It’s basically Star-Trek-esq teleportation in modern times. You can either scan/take a photo/digitally create an object, and then anyone in the world can print out a replica for pennies. You see a cool statue or fossil you want to print at home? You can likely take a photo and turn it into a STL (files 3D printers use) or someone already has. See some hook or clip for your car, lamp shade, whatever? Someone has likely modeled it and you can just print it. It is really that simple.

Around the House

For example, a few years ago I woke up and found one of the facades covering our mechanical blind mechanism had broken off which meant a bit of an eye sore for people in our living room. Now my first thought was to look online and see what I could find. A few options appeared, Amazon had the ‘Brand Name’ clips at ~$20 USD for 2 clips, and it would take 3 weeks… A Third party had 20 clips, for about $20 with 2 day shipping… BUT, I found a model that someone had made that was the identical clip I needed. I sent it to my printer and within 10 minutes I had replaced BOTH clips for 3 cents in filament (The plastic the printer uses to make stuff).

Or just yesterday I was changing the air filters on my car, and for whatever reason, the engineers decided you have to remove part of the interior paneling that is held to the car with little pinch clips. Upon removing the paneling a bit to reach the filters, I had broken 2 of the 6 clips. Looking around online, it was a similar story to the blind clips. ~$10 for 5 or ~$20 for 10 with 2 day shipping, both seeming exceeding expensive; especially for a clip that even the dealership reports breaking nearly every time they change the filters. This time I used Google Lens (Which is also amazing) to take a photo, identify the clip, and find a STL within seconds. I decided to print a few since I assume I’ll need more in the future, as well as a wall mount for my car’s portable vacuum.

The Total Cost? 67 cents and 2 hours.

You just can’t beat that.

Just for fun, here is a quick time-lapse of the print:

Made with my little project for recording timelapses using a third-party camera which you can find here.

Free Money?

Yeah, it sounds too good to be true (And sort of is, which I’ll get into in a minute).

What I find fascinating, is that it pays to share your models online.

My printer in particular is a Bambu A1, which is ~$400, but I didn’t pay a single cent of it. Remember those STL files that 3D printers use? Well you can upload them to sharing sites that let anyone search and print them. Now some places you can actually charge people to download them, but others like MakerWorld, you upload them for free, and when people download them you get points which can be redeemed for rewards such as gift cards for new printers or filaments. So you basically make things to print, people print them, and then you get money to make/print more things. With this, I’ve been running on a net positive cost for all my printing, basically; I’ve earned more money than I’ve spent on my printer & filaments.

To get an idea, I’ve remixed or designed mostly practical things such as this book/sign/tablet stand:

(Can be found here)

Or this awesome dinosaur fossil scan:

(Can be found here)

The Catch

There is always a catch, and the catch here is that with these models online, despite having a non-commercial license attached to them, people sell them to others for often times $30+ when it cost them cents to print and no cost to design. And unfortunately there is not much you can do about it. I have some more popular models that appear on Facebook, Etsy, and Ebay every week. For every one you take down, another one shows up. And dealing with the users usually ends with them telling you to “Fuck Off”, or “You uploaded it online, it’s mine now, deal with it” (No really).

You can try suing them, but generally it only ends up covering how much they made from the prints, which often times is not enough to cover the lawyer fees. So it’s just not worth it in the end; which does make me less likely to share more models in the future.

The Good

That being said, gotta compliment sandwich this. The good often outweighs the bad. Remember the Star-trek analogy? Well after uploading these, the site allows anyone who prints to upload photos, and it’s quite amazing seeing people around the world have an item you created in their living room, bed room, or business.

Here is a shop in Michigan that has printed 200+ book holders for their book store:

(Credit 1stRaven - Checkout the bookstore if you live in Michigan! The Bluestocking Bookshop)

And I’ve had users from Japan, China, India, Europe, and more upload photos of the designs in use. And every photos makes it worth it.

TL;DR:

(Too Long Didn’t Read)

If you want to embark on a new hobby, look into 3D printing. You can find cheap/used printers (I HIGHLY recommend Bambu A1s - Especially the Combos as this lets you print with 4 colors/filaments at once) for less than $200 (New for $400). And often you can get free design software like TinkerCad or Autodesk Fusion 360 and watch/read tutorials about how to create your designs.

I’ve personally suggested getting kids into this because it has so many avenues of learning and exploration. You have the maintenance of the printer (Bambu ones are fairly low maint). Design skills which can be transferred in to a career. If they want to sell their prints, they learn about management of money, inventory, delivery, satisfaction, etc.