When you do stuff like this you are really just selling to the one procenters... well spending vice. If you going to sell to the 10%... shipping needs to be cheaper.
@@Macatho Doesn't sound like trash to me. It's not gonna make you a millionaire, but will certainly earn you a few hundreds per month, so it could be supplementary income. Now there are definitely other things that are way faster to print, so in terms of money vs print time I guess you must know better alternatives. But hey just buy more printers and print all kinds of things. Not all eggs in the same basket, unless you find a sturdy enough basket (in terms of how much money you could make) then feel free to print just that 1 thing on all those printers, and enjoy it while it lasts.
@@matsv201 "The one percenters" lol Or people who know that low-production products COST MORE, you entitled twit. The reason something like this might cost five bucks at walmart is because they'd make MILLIONS of them.
I probably would have printed in different colors to avoid having to spray paint and only printed the shells gluing the different parts together. The face I probably would have make a hole in the brown part and allowed created slots to slide in the face behind it. That would only require painting the eyes. A printer with a multi material add on could have also helped out here.
The Prusa i3 MK3S+ has a 5 color addon (MMU2S) to simultaneously print upto 5 colors at the same time. Then you would just be adding cork and packaging
Activation hyper business consulting mode: - make a stamp for branding the logo - use oneway clip construction in your Model parts, too connect them (screws, are too slow= Workflow) - Stamp for coloring the eyes Mode off
Doesn't even need a clip, just use bumps/studs for registration and then a dab of superglue to secure. Also, a cutout vinyl piece will work better for the eyes, will have perfect opacity.
I was thinking that if he used his eye stencil with the paint pen, he'd be able to go to town on it a lot faster and not have to worry about getting any on the face.
Everything what you went through is called "production design". It's the difference between coming up with a concept and another version for production where the end goal is to reduce costs/time as much as possible. Good stuff.
For the eyes you can paint it green with the first stencil, let dry and paint over it in black. You can then just rub off the black from the eyes with tissue while it's still wet. Been doing that for signs and other embossed things...
OMG, I'm glad I watched this. This is getting posted to all my social media. Maybe if people see this they will stop asking me, "Why don't you 3D print things and sell them online?" THIS is why. As you found out it is quite a time-consuming process!.
"It's rather humbling looking at a simple thing like this and realizing how many steps are required to build it." I used to make milk jugs and sunny delight bottles. I felt that comment in my core.
I know, right? I spend months refining a product to sell to my niche customers, only to get told they can do it better....... And then they come back and pay for it, because it wasn't as simple as they thought it was.
Wow, this dude is so industrious. This is what it means to be making your own money. To detect if there is a market for something, then acting upon it. Hope you make it big dude, you have the mindset.
Great project! A few tips for the next batch to reduce cost/weight/time: You followed a lot of design for manufacture (DFM) which is great! This means making the actual components of the product, such as printed bits is painless (this is what most of printing is). But you didn't follow enough Design for Assembly (DFA) practices (this reduces time/energy spent assembling). For instance, you should eliminate screws, and move to snap fits if possible. They take seconds - you could have snap connectors on each round module, or you could have a single central printed pin you push from bottom to top that sandwiches it all together (a rectangular pin would be best to reduce rotation of the modules). Even better yet, use adhesive. If it's good enough for the Smartphone screens it is good enough for the 3D printed parts. PLA fuses to other PLA with normal superglue. ABS to ABS sticks well with superglue too, although for a perfect bond try acetone. If you put a slight lip internally on the round stacking modules no glue will run out, and you will save time assembling. Lots of amazing research done by big automobile and hardware companies on DFA, worth a google. I love your jig for aligning the top cork lettering, genius work! That's some DFA right there. I made and sold a similarly cylindrical product last year. What my company looked into was cylindrical shipping tubes for the product. It reduces internal foam packing, it's extremely strong, and can be bought in a variety of sizes (suppliers can make from poster tubes to huge wine whisky tubes and more!). It also added to the unique aesthetic. You can buy a 2 meter tube and then cut it down to size (or get in contact with a local box company to supply to size). You just put plastic endcaps in the top and bottom and you're good to go.
Nice conteibution. On iterative design, if the eyes are such a pain to paint, redesign the model and remove them, make them flat, paint should be easy with stencils.
Excellent presentation on product developement and delivery. Great job. You want faster turn around time and less expensive make a smooth finished prototype with your 3d printer. (Bondo and primer paint) and then make 5-20 silicon molds of it. Then just cast them in resin with the color you want, no painting and then you can do batches of them. Also get rid of the fasteners and just design in a locking tab and slots so it can be used as a treasure/stash box as well as being assembled with just a twist.
If you 3D Print a cover for the eyes, you could perfectly align that mask and spray-paint all of them with the same mask. It would self-align from the overall shape. One thing to figure out would be the sealing at the very border. That would need a real test I think. Maybe it works straight away, or maybe one can add a tiny "seal" from glue, or tape or something to the critical corners.
@@MakerAventuras if you use a brim or just have really good bed adhesion printing those eyes would be no problem. Make them a few mm thick and putting slots in the body for them, max of a minute for install. Sounds way better
Love this breakdown! One other consideration I'd add to the "should I do this full-time?" question is "what's the market size?" That is, how many of these could you sell before you run out of customers?
Steamspy dot com estimates 1-2M downloads and 14k concurrent users. Your channel has over 100k subs and your discord has a couple hundred members afaict. I think these are valid data points but I'm not sure quite how to use them. My gut says the market size is 1k-10k which is admittedly a rather large range.
That pizza analogy reminds me of when a professor gives a really bad analogy in class. You were the one kid who understood it and went on with it. That being said, I loved the video
Depending on how you size your screws, threads and holes. You can often just let stuff self tap in. If your building a product with a very course thread. Then you will likely want to change your model so that the thread area is treated as a second model so you can assign a much thicker extrusion amount . I have found in the .8mm range helped significantly, so that I could print replacement Microphone clips. As its very hard to find inserts for said thread size. If you don't do this, you end up with little pockets of air that causes the tap to just tear out the threads you have cut. Took me a bit of trial and error to figure this out. Hope it helps people.
My thoughts exactly. Threaded screws (and inserts) are great when you need to disassemble and reassemble. But for a build that is meant to remain untouched, self tapering screws were designed for this very purpose.
Nice work mate! You could've maybe printed the face with small cutouts for the eyes. Print green eyes (maybe with glow in the dark material). Apply some clue into the slots and pop the eyes into place.
@Tycondaroga100 Resin casting is not that good for the environment. PLA for instance can be recycled and reused, it's not toxic and eco-friendly. Consumer products should have a life span, just like every living thing on this planet.
I really appreciate this detail work through of a real product, from the designing to production even to the packaging method. I'm a leader of a middle size OEM/ODM company/factory in China. We are dealing everyday these similar work process, sometime for much bigger project. I really like this video because of its comprehensive thinking of the whole process of a product and I may translate this video and share it to my colleagues. Good job!
For small details like the eyes, you want to consider using an air brush and airbrush paints. My personal favorites currently are Createx Colors acrylic airbrush paint. On plastics I would suggest adding some of their polyurethane to the mix which helps with adhesion and durability. The advantage of using a airbrush paint is that they dry very flat and smooth. so you get very smooth surfaces. Plus the pigments are very fine, and you will find you don't need to spray anywhere close to as much paint for good coverage.
Oh man, I'm glad I found this channel. I love your ONI content and I also happen to be a bit of a 3d printing nerd. Having the same kind of objective scientific cost benefit analysis that you use in ONI applied to 3d printing tickles my brain in all the right places.
Well of course there are comments with unhappy people saying how unhappy they are about some of your work, but I had thoughts like... "Damn, he's smart" "Damn, that was pretty smart" "Oh man, what a smart dude!" Thanks for the leverage bro! I learned a lot; had me day dreaming of manufacturing in my home
Michael, thanks for the entertaining and informative video❤. I have close to two thousand hours in ONI, watch all your ONI content, and recently received my Sweepy. My son and I enjoyed the video and it was great to see how they were made. I'm more interested in getting into 3D printing now. Though it looks like an expensive hobby lol
What if you'd print the eyes separately in a big batch in the desired color. And just make an insert in the face as a guide. So you would only need to glue it in place and can use the bottom layer as nice top surface finish👍
Hey, fellow etsy shop owner here and engineering student. If you make the eyes stick out farther, you can stamp/roll the green on a jig stamp pad. Or maybe even do that without the extension.
To be quite frank here: You made money because your fans wanted your autograph and wanted to contribute to the channel. This is not a product you would generally get to sell for $30.
Yes, he got basically free marketing for this product, because he'd already set up the UA-cam channel. The combination of his fans and the game's fans is probably what sold it. But, if you really like an Indie game, and someone sells merch --- well, it's a rare thing that's worth a little extra.
Hats off to Klei for allowing this. There is a good case for being stingy with your rights but in some cases it is better to look at all the outcomes of the decision like generating good will, creating fandom, strengthening existing fandom. Nowadays fandom can come to the rescue financially as well.
Man, i love your content and I swear, eventually I'm gonna buy one Sweepy (it's a little expensive the shipping from US to Chile), so again, love your content and thanks for all your efforts on both channels. Greetings from Chile
The most important thing to factor into cost equations would have been the existence of the channel audience, without which there would have been less demand and less awareness of the product. Advertising and exposure are huge in the profitability equation. UA-cam exists because of the value of advertising, lest anyone doubt it.
Would it be possible to have it hollow with a coaster lid? That way it could store stuff in it. Would be much lighter for shipping probably, too. Not to mention it's adding a feature of allowing you to put whatever you want in it.
Thanks for this posted video. Really hits home and cost. I bought my 3d printer to replace a wood product that I was selling online. The math like yours became a nightmare and showed I would need a lot of printers. The business side of P &L was fun and interesting.
Wow, such an excellent overview of the complete make-and-sell product! I faced with something like that when I've decided to make plasma cut fire pits. I didn't expect to actually needing a full-blown factory (which I'm in process of building right now) to scale the production up just a little bit. You can make prototype with sticks and glue, but in order to be able to mass produce it you'll need way way more. It's also almost impossible to communicate to people who never done anything similar.
Have you looked into printing it already pieced together with the correctly colored filament using Mosaic's Palette or Prusa's multi material device? (You'd need a Prusa MK3S for the MMU2.) With the better use of swapping colors in the infill, the wasted filament can be minimized (but still there). Granted, using either of these technologies can cause some extra failed prints and does increase the print times a little. But curious about your stance on this. Thanks for your videos and also for sharing your STLs, from a fellow 3D printing enthusiast.
That would be interesting, but I don't have access to that equipment at the moment. There are still some issues with overhang that would require special attention. The biggest hurdle that I see would be obtaining the correct colors.
Thanks for the break down. I think many of us who own 3d printers, sooner or later ponder what it would take to make money doing production runs. Your video helps open the eyes to things many people might not realize.
Overall, this was an excellent video covering the steps necessary for small production runs. This is were making a silicone mold and casting the parts would really help with large numbers. The mold has a sunk cost of course, especially for larger items, but the time saved and the ability to dye the resin a certain color would definitely help. You would still need other steps of course and optimization for a different production method.
Try making the eyes concave so the paint pools in the eyes while keeping the shape. This will save a lot of time and effort as you can calculate how much paint is needed to make the process repeatable.
Better way to do the eyes and surrounding black area. Make a 3 piece assembly. Your outer brown ring. There is an oval cut in it for the black area. Print the black area by itself, set it up so it has a flat bottom and is set up like a rectangle. You can paint it by itself, no need for a mask or jig. Print the eyes the same way, you can paint them separate if you want, or find a suitable filament color. Glue everything together.
I really feel the shipping part. I offer a product with lots of variants. Most expensive one with all features is just under 1 kg. If I go from 999g to 1001g shipping cost is doubled and would make it as profitable as one with half the features, but with twice the production time 😅 Gonna save the box cutting part for testing! 😁
NB. For painting 3d parts- an old microwave platter - with turning ring (manual rotating)- or use the motor and a VFD to control the speed - is useful for streamlining the "stack"....
I loved the pizza slice analogy, a good representation of the motivations behind setting your pricing. IE, reducing item price might grow sales, but at what point do the returns diminish. -Me, a person who currently makes pizza for a living -Also me, a person who played rollercoaster tycoon as a kid
Currently working on a DIY rotary moulding machine (think 3d printer hobby machine but with the Rotary Moulding Process). This type of product would be great for it - no wasted material, fully hollow (means lighter for shipping) + one solid shape and is easily repeatable. Awesome project!
Great video. I make a device for barber shops and even though I have been doing so for 8+ years now I am always innovating the process to make it easier and more profitable and in the end I try to make the product better as well. It's a box and took 16 drill operations (drilling, chamfering, enlarging....) and I ended up with a small tabletop CNC machine, 3D printed a fixture and now it does all but 4 of those operations for me. Keep up the good work.
The usage of Bots for the Boxes is 100% true. A day or two after I made a purchase for about 1000 odd carton boxes, I get ads with better deals. Well, I just saved them for next time...
Very intersting calculation. One thing you said it is in theory small profit to work for 19-30$ / h well put in perspective that I work as a full stack developer for 5$/h sooo I dream about working for about 20$/h. Nice video, very informative in case of running 3D printing bussines and what it actually takes to do it. Thanks.
Great video! You’ve earned a sub :) What are the modifications you made to the ender 3 besides the tilt for automation? Could you provide links to any stl files and products used? I am assuming you upgraded the hot end for printing with ABS? I’d like to get into printing with ABS and PETGand could use some tips. I look forward to more of your videos. Thanks!
Could be optimized further: you can get a custom colored filament so you don't need to paint anything except the eyes. Then snap fit everything together. Then instead of laser engraving the top, just silkscreen it or make a rubber stamp. Could get everything assembled in a couple of minutes.
I have an MBA in Entrepreneurship, this video is classroom quality education. You covered 90% of what they teach in MBA school for bringing a product to market. The remaining 10% is (shhh!) trade secrets and marketing. I enjoyed this video so much I want to share with you what this video has inspired. It is possible to make 3 separate product improvements to this design, without really changing what you're doing all that much. 1. Wireless cellphone charger built in. For those that don't drink coffee and want something specific for their desk. 2. Hidden compartment puzzle box for the sneaky sneaks who need to hide their AA rechargable batteries for some reason or to keep passwords to their super secret digital journal safe. Maybe even a place to snuggly store USB external storage units. 3. My personal favorite, lean into the coffee mug holder design even further and install a Peltier where that cork top goes to keep that coffee hot longer. Make sure it uses USB so it doesn't take up valuable electrical outlet real estate and the cord can be easily and cheaply replaced if it goes missing of becomes damaged. Each of these ideas would actually increase your labor time and might not actually add enough financial incentive to execute into a realized product design, but it was a fun thought exercise to reboot your product concept into a value added concept. Please...Please, please, please: Keep using this format for showing your projects and keep making videos! Also, consider making a Udemy account to teach this information. Oh look! You already have your first video done. 😂😎
Oh, you'd have to figure out how the Peltier project could work without melting the finished product too to make it work properly. I recommend using a purpose made plastic for the model and having a separate printer with separate heat settings to make that one if you were serious about it. If you figured out how to do all three ideas in one single model? I'd pay $100.00 USD for it and even get a copy of the game to play. Not sure that's worth the trouble for you though. Ask around again.
you can add a "brim" in the model itself instead of using the slicer's brim for the face part, just make it an "inner brim" this way it won't require any post processing and you can just leave it on, just add a thin ring around the inner edge of the bottom face I would also design it to clip on instead of using bolts, you have a lot of inner space you can design large strong clips that'll be hidden
I agree with most here, I would print the eyes separately and glue them into a hole you leave when you print the middle part. But great ideas, I've learn that too atm and asked myself how I could automate it.
@@NickBair316 That doesn't make any sense. I was referring to "that price, that kind of item". But anyway, still, actually no I don't. Why would I buy some junk? And to that note. If I'd buy something like that, why would I pay excessive price of it?
@@jothain That's just the realistic price of producing something small batch in a developed country. Of course it's gonna cost more to produce something like this when you don't pay the worker $1.50 an hour and make 15 000 of them.
@@finpin928 No it's not. Heck if that thing would be Swiss made it would still be expensive. Just look at the quality of those, they look horrible for that money. I live in more developed country and I don't think anyone would pay that kind of an price here. Which is good imo btw 😂
@@jothain wow you are salty lol. I'm sure plenty of people in your country would pay that price. Sorry things are bad for you right now, I'm sure they will improve!
Great build! What I usually do - and what might be a helpful idea I hope - is to recess the eyes a bit to make a 2mm or 3mm canal. Then I take my color - nail polish with an injector applicator - and simply pool it into the canal. An even coat every time!
I believe the math at 23:25 is a bit off. In the top line, you say you'd need 10.2 3D printers at 130W each, consuming 1326.6W total. This checks out fine. However, you pay for electricity by the KWh (kilo-watt-hour), and your rate appears to be 7 cents per KWh. If your printers take a total of 1.3KW, then you'd be paying 9 cents per hour, not 19$ per hour! Not trying to take away from this otherwise excellent video, it's a great overview of the cost/benefit analysis involved and iterative design. Great work!
This covers a lot of the key info that many people don't seem to understand when it comes to item pricing. It seems many have the mindset that the end product they get to hold is how the items magically pop out from the get-go. They don't factor in that the material that the items made out of costs money, or the process that is needed to go through to reach that end result, painting, assembly, etc,. Or the fact that many storefronts do take a cut of what it sold for. So say like for you, you get $30 per item. But how much of that has to go back into the process to continue the making of said items, how much does the site you selling it on takes? You do have to weigh all that in, as well as sort out if what you are offering will even sell and if so at what price range would it sell for.
1) If you print the center piece with the eyes out of the neon green filament, you can paint it over and then just sand the paint off the raised eyes on a stationary sander rig. 2) Can you tell me more about how you automated the printing with your ender3? Exactly what software did you use and how did you interface that with your Ender3?
Geat video ! One idea to try to make the eyes faster : printing with green filament. You would then paint the body, then the face with a stancil. After painting, just sand off the paint on the eyes with a small dremel tool.
this was inCREDibly interesting to see and watch. very good break down of all steps involved, was like watching an entire business come to life in front of my eyes. well done, really enjoyable, subbed!
Dude this video was awesome and answered some of the questions I didn't even know to ask! You earned this subscriber for sure! I'm tinkering atm but do plan to make it more of a side hustle/fulltime in the near future.
Fantastic production quality and display of information! I can't believe you only have 5k subs. Please keeping making videos and don't give up when it gets tough, this is a million sub channel, I know it will be. Keep up the great work!
I would make the center piece (with the face) in 2 parts, the inner part with the eyes, and a thin outer ring with the oval in it, then just slide it over the inner part aligning the eyes with the oval, couple drops of super glue to hold it in place. That way you can do them in the correct color and avoid a lot of painting. If you want a super smooth glossy finish, acetone vapor smooth the ABS it will look like an injection molded part.
I just came here from a video of turning paper into molded parts, so I might be a little biased. However, I think that might be decent way to go for some parts. You make the mold with 3d printing, then use that to produce 100-200 pieces from scrap cardboard/egg cartons with rice binding it together. Sand the surface of the mold to change the finish of the part, then seal the part itself with paint the way you were doing with the ABS parts. Also, it looks like you have most, if not all the tools required to start building your own tools/efficiency boosters. Consider the humble foot pedal. With nothing but a cheap microcontroller, a hall effect sensor and a weak magnet, you can add analog control to whatever machine you're building. A heat gun is a good example. A cannibalized heat gun in an aluminum enclosure can be hooked up to a foot pedal such that the foot pedal activates the heating element and controls the fan speed. That would make a great efficiency booster for painting those eyes. (Also, use that stencil with the paint pen. It'll make you much faster.) I don't know if you're interested in making more one-man product runs. But if you are, such DIY tools are excellent build projects, and you can tweak them to make them better. And if you don't need it anymore, you have salvageable parts to build more tools.
When it comes to the eyes you could try rolling the face over a thin layer of paint, provided they stick out far enough but not too far. And you'd have to mask the rest so you don't ruin the brown.
for efficiently painting those greenish eyes just use a plain rubber stamp and green serigraphic paint. Apply a white layer before the green if you want to achieve a brighter green tone.
You can also attach the eye color pencil to a 3D printer and use it to paint the eyes. To do this, create a suitable shape for the objects and create a GCode. And do you really need a brim? So far I only print in PLA. And I can do that without it.
“Let me ask you a question, how much would you pay for this”
Me - “ Well wtf is it”. 🤣🤣🤣
exactly what i was thinking.
Watched the whole video, I still don't know
@@louiswouters71 He said $30 right after the question
@@lwhitehouse2424 LOL, we are not talking about the price. We are talking about what that object is. It looks like an oversized coaster to me.
idk if this is needed anymore, but he said it close to the start of the video at 2:05
"how much would you pay for these"
five bucks.
"I sold them for 30 a piece"
dang.
And even 30 bucks a pop the margins are absolutely trash. Just the filament runs him around $3-5.
When you do stuff like this you are really just selling to the one procenters... well spending vice.
If you going to sell to the 10%... shipping needs to be cheaper.
custom is always pricier
@@Macatho Doesn't sound like trash to me. It's not gonna make you a millionaire, but will certainly earn you a few hundreds per month, so it could be supplementary income. Now there are definitely other things that are way faster to print, so in terms of money vs print time I guess you must know better alternatives. But hey just buy more printers and print all kinds of things. Not all eggs in the same basket, unless you find a sturdy enough basket (in terms of how much money you could make) then feel free to print just that 1 thing on all those printers, and enjoy it while it lasts.
@@matsv201 "The one percenters" lol
Or people who know that low-production products COST MORE, you entitled twit.
The reason something like this might cost five bucks at walmart is because they'd make MILLIONS of them.
I enjoyed the video but MAN that pizza analogy was rough
Yeah, it was pretty rough.
Im Glad i wasnt the only one trying to grasp the concept
*noted* However it was quite tasty.
At first I was having difficult with the pizza analogy as well, but 425F and 18 minutes later I solved the problem.
@@WatchItPrint Still, I appreciated the attempt to cover the diminishing returns aspect wrt to supply and demand. It was tasty.
I probably would have printed in different colors to avoid having to spray paint and only printed the shells gluing the different parts together. The face I probably would have make a hole in the brown part and allowed created slots to slide in the face behind it. That would only require painting the eyes. A printer with a multi material add on could have also helped out here.
I love how in depth you went. This helped me a lot so thanks
Glad it was helpful!
I'd look for some filament that is close enough in color for each section and skip the painting completely.
Yeah there should be almost no painting, unless your are printing one big mass.
Also would make it higher quality as paint can chip revealing actual color.
A dual nozzle hot end might aid in the process too assuming there’s no extra issues arising with his auto setup.
@@tony_yt5967 thats what i thought and print the whole thing in 1 go and just do the eyes after
The Prusa i3 MK3S+ has a 5 color addon (MMU2S) to simultaneously print upto 5 colors at the same time. Then you would just be adding cork and packaging
Activation hyper business consulting mode:
- make a stamp for branding the logo
- use oneway clip construction in your Model parts, too connect them (screws, are too slow= Workflow)
- Stamp for coloring the eyes
Mode off
Whut?
Doesn't even need a clip, just use bumps/studs for registration and then a dab of superglue to secure.
Also, a cutout vinyl piece will work better for the eyes, will have perfect opacity.
I was thinking thread them, but that works too! :D
@@Stevieboy7 superglue = work, clips are simpler
Oddly enough, clips are exactly what I came up with for my part. No more gluing two pieces together
just a thought - if you let the eyes stick out a mm or two more. maybe you could rolling the green color on it.
I was thinking that if he used his eye stencil with the paint pen, he'd be able to go to town on it a lot faster and not have to worry about getting any on the face.
I felt how the knife dulled when you cut on the glass.
HAH!
That glass cutting board had real nails on chalkboard energy.
It really bothered me
I really liked this video, but I'm still shaking out the chill from that...
The bumper thing to knock parts off plus the gcode seems cool
Everything what you went through is called "production design". It's the difference between coming up with a concept and another version for production where the end goal is to reduce costs/time as much as possible.
Good stuff.
Print the eyes separately and model them with built in clips so you can just snap the eyes in
For the eyes you can paint it green with the first stencil, let dry and paint over it in black. You can then just rub off the black from the eyes with tissue while it's still wet.
Been doing that for signs and other embossed things...
OMG, I'm glad I watched this. This is getting posted to all my social media. Maybe if people see this they will stop asking me, "Why don't you 3D print things and sell them online?" THIS is why. As you found out it is quite a time-consuming process!.
"It's rather humbling looking at a simple thing like this and realizing how many steps are required to build it." I used to make milk jugs and sunny delight bottles. I felt that comment in my core.
I know, right? I spend months refining a product to sell to my niche customers, only to get told they can do it better....... And then they come back and pay for it, because it wasn't as simple as they thought it was.
Wow, this dude is so industrious. This is what it means to be making your own money. To detect if there is a market for something, then acting upon it. Hope you make it big dude, you have the mindset.
I see some This Old Tony influences here, nice
Haha now that you mention it I see it to!
Exactly what I thought!
YUP! The hand-cam with the sharp cuts and the silly listing off of things
His son!
Great project! A few tips for the next batch to reduce cost/weight/time: You followed a lot of design for manufacture (DFM) which is great! This means making the actual components of the product, such as printed bits is painless (this is what most of printing is). But you didn't follow enough Design for Assembly (DFA) practices (this reduces time/energy spent assembling). For instance, you should eliminate screws, and move to snap fits if possible. They take seconds - you could have snap connectors on each round module, or you could have a single central printed pin you push from bottom to top that sandwiches it all together (a rectangular pin would be best to reduce rotation of the modules). Even better yet, use adhesive. If it's good enough for the Smartphone screens it is good enough for the 3D printed parts. PLA fuses to other PLA with normal superglue. ABS to ABS sticks well with superglue too, although for a perfect bond try acetone. If you put a slight lip internally on the round stacking modules no glue will run out, and you will save time assembling. Lots of amazing research done by big automobile and hardware companies on DFA, worth a google.
I love your jig for aligning the top cork lettering, genius work! That's some DFA right there.
I made and sold a similarly cylindrical product last year. What my company looked into was cylindrical shipping tubes for the product. It reduces internal foam packing, it's extremely strong, and can be bought in a variety of sizes (suppliers can make from poster tubes to huge wine whisky tubes and more!). It also added to the unique aesthetic. You can buy a 2 meter tube and then cut it down to size (or get in contact with a local box company to supply to size). You just put plastic endcaps in the top and bottom and you're good to go.
Thanks for the tips, it was a good read.
Nice conteibution. On iterative design, if the eyes are such a pain to paint, redesign the model and remove them, make them flat, paint should be easy with stencils.
Do you know if it's a good idea to glue ABS 3D printed parts together using the Solvent Cement plumbers use to connect ABS pipes?
Excellent presentation on product developement and delivery. Great job.
You want faster turn around time and less expensive make a smooth finished prototype with your 3d printer. (Bondo and primer paint) and then make 5-20 silicon molds of it. Then just cast them in resin with the color you want, no painting and then you can do batches of them. Also get rid of the fasteners and just design in a locking tab and slots so it can be used as a treasure/stash box as well as being assembled with just a twist.
I really like your idea of a stash box
I would have printed the eyes separately with the right colour. You can fit a lot of them in one go. Just glue them in later.
wouldnt that be more work though?
if you have slots for the eyes it make sens to glue them!
If you 3D Print a cover for the eyes, you could perfectly align that mask and spray-paint all of them with the same mask. It would self-align from the overall shape. One thing to figure out would be the sealing at the very border. That would need a real test I think. Maybe it works straight away, or maybe one can add a tiny "seal" from glue, or tape or something to the critical corners.
3d printing tiny features like the eyes with an FDM 3D printer is tricky. Not impossible, but tricky and complicated.
@@MakerAventuras if you use a brim or just have really good bed adhesion printing those eyes would be no problem. Make them a few mm thick and putting slots in the body for them, max of a minute for install. Sounds way better
I have to say, the pizza metaphor was a little weak, but then again you got pizza out of the deal so I can see both sides here.
Should he have used a cake instead? :D
@@aerospaceresearchmeyerton2687 but the cake is a lie I thought?
I love how you broke this down to explain the business side and all the facets that come into play when considering this stuff. I approve this.
After watching the hole video i still have no idea what this thing is.
Apparently it's a drink coaster? -ish?
plumbus?
novelty coaster
Did you really watch it then? It's explained quite clearly
Its stolen intellectual property
I can't believe I used to watch you when I was into oxygen not included and years later when I'm into 3d printing I find you again
I like how you explained how much time each process takes
A good brush and decent paint will allow you to paint those eyes in two brushstrokes. Throw those silly pens in the trash.
Really cool video!
Love this breakdown! One other consideration I'd add to the "should I do this full-time?" question is "what's the market size?" That is, how many of these could you sell before you run out of customers?
BTW I bought one and I absolutely love it! Brings a smile to my face every morning.
Yeah I'm not sure how to figure out the full market size.
Steamspy dot com estimates 1-2M downloads and 14k concurrent users. Your channel has over 100k subs and your discord has a couple hundred members afaict. I think these are valid data points but I'm not sure quite how to use them. My gut says the market size is 1k-10k which is admittedly a rather large range.
You also have to factor in, some customers may buy more than one. Offering a discount on multiples will also drive sales.
Thats until the chinese step in and offer it cheaper using injection molding with better surface finish than 3d printing
That pizza analogy reminds me of when a professor gives a really bad analogy in class. You were the one kid who understood it and went on with it.
That being said, I loved the video
I got more from the spreadsheet data 😂
Depending on how you size your screws, threads and holes. You can often just let stuff self tap in. If your building a product with a very course thread. Then you will likely want to change your model so that the thread area is treated as a second model so you can assign a much thicker extrusion amount . I have found in the .8mm range helped significantly, so that I could print replacement Microphone clips. As its very hard to find inserts for said thread size. If you don't do this, you end up with little pockets of air that causes the tap to just tear out the threads you have cut. Took me a bit of trial and error to figure this out. Hope it helps people.
My thoughts exactly. Threaded screws (and inserts) are great when you need to disassemble and reassemble. But for a build that is meant to remain untouched, self tapering screws were designed for this very purpose.
Nice work mate! You could've maybe printed the face with small cutouts for the eyes. Print green eyes (maybe with glow in the dark material). Apply some clue into the slots and pop the eyes into place.
3D Printers are great for the prototyping - the production you start doing silicone molds and cast resin.
not true, I make products from 3D printing and have made over $100K in the first year doing so.
@@igorchak48 mass produced parts or one offs?
@@OrginalDravas mass produced, over 10,000 units
@@igorchak48
How many and what printers are you running? I would assume material cost is high?
@Tycondaroga100 Resin casting is not that good for the environment. PLA for instance can be recycled and reused, it's not toxic and eco-friendly. Consumer products should have a life span, just like every living thing on this planet.
I really appreciate this detail work through of a real product, from the designing to production even to the packaging method. I'm a leader of a middle size OEM/ODM company/factory in China. We are dealing everyday these similar work process, sometime for much bigger project. I really like this video because of its comprehensive thinking of the whole process of a product and I may translate this video and share it to my colleagues. Good job!
For small details like the eyes, you want to consider using an air brush and airbrush paints. My personal favorites currently are Createx Colors acrylic airbrush paint. On plastics I would suggest adding some of their polyurethane to the mix which helps with adhesion and durability. The advantage of using a airbrush paint is that they dry very flat and smooth. so you get very smooth surfaces. Plus the pigments are very fine, and you will find you don't need to spray anywhere close to as much paint for good coverage.
That cardboard guide template is so awesome! That wrap-around design is genius. Really got me thinking of all the applications.
Oh man, I'm glad I found this channel. I love your ONI content and I also happen to be a bit of a 3d printing nerd. Having the same kind of objective scientific cost benefit analysis that you use in ONI applied to 3d printing tickles my brain in all the right places.
Well of course there are comments with unhappy people saying how unhappy they are about some of your work, but I had thoughts like...
"Damn, he's smart"
"Damn, that was pretty smart"
"Oh man, what a smart dude!"
Thanks for the leverage bro! I learned a lot; had me day dreaming of manufacturing in my home
Michael, thanks for the entertaining and informative video❤. I have close to two thousand hours in ONI, watch all your ONI content, and recently received my Sweepy. My son and I enjoyed the video and it was great to see how they were made. I'm more interested in getting into 3D printing now. Though it looks like an expensive hobby lol
Wasn’t expecting it, but the business analysis is fantastic!! One of the best drill downs into costs I’ve seen.
The pizza analogy could do with some improvement tho lol 😂
What if you'd print the eyes separately in a big batch in the desired color. And just make an insert in the face as a guide.
So you would only need to glue it in place and can use the bottom layer as nice top surface finish👍
Hey, fellow etsy shop owner here and engineering student. If you make the eyes stick out farther, you can stamp/roll the green on a jig stamp pad. Or maybe even do that without the extension.
Him: How much would you pay for something like this?
Me: uhh 5-15 dollars?
five bucks. no more than that.
China: hold my beer
@@joegadget670 Hahahahaha
Those oxygen not included sprites you added in are such a nice touch, nice video!
To be quite frank here: You made money because your fans wanted your autograph and wanted to contribute to the channel. This is not a product you would generally get to sell for $30.
@@rb4234 so basically you are paying what you thought the video content is worth actually, not the print
Yes, he got basically free marketing for this product, because he'd already set up the UA-cam channel. The combination of his fans and the game's fans is probably what sold it. But, if you really like an Indie game, and someone sells merch --- well, it's a rare thing that's worth a little extra.
@@rb4234 You're only proving his point, minus the autograph part.
Wait so isn't that the same with almost any product? People buy a product because they are a fan of the brand? Like I don't get your point here?
So they were donations pretty much ;)
Hats off to Klei for allowing this. There is a good case for being stingy with your rights but in some cases it is better to look at all the outcomes of the decision like generating good will, creating fandom, strengthening existing fandom.
Nowadays fandom can come to the rescue financially as well.
Man, i love your content and I swear, eventually I'm gonna buy one Sweepy (it's a little expensive the shipping from US to Chile), so again, love your content and thanks for all your efforts on both channels. Greetings from Chile
The most important thing to factor into cost equations would have been the existence of the channel audience, without which there would have been less demand and less awareness of the product. Advertising and exposure are huge in the profitability equation. UA-cam exists because of the value of advertising, lest anyone doubt it.
Would it be possible to have it hollow with a coaster lid? That way it could store stuff in it. Would be much lighter for shipping probably, too. Not to mention it's adding a feature of allowing you to put whatever you want in it.
Thanks for this posted video. Really hits home and cost. I bought my 3d printer to replace a wood product that I was selling online. The math like yours became a nightmare and showed I would need a lot of printers. The business side of P &L was fun and interesting.
You should set the brim only inside the part so you dont have to remove it
For these parts, a brim isn’t even needed, if you needed a brim then you have bad setup and settings
This video is awesome, really transparent and all inclusive on how you would come with a product
Amazing! Makes you really think how automating these types of production chains cuts the cost and the production times. Keep it up!
Wow, such an excellent overview of the complete make-and-sell product! I faced with something like that when I've decided to make plasma cut fire pits. I didn't expect to actually needing a full-blown factory (which I'm in process of building right now) to scale the production up just a little bit. You can make prototype with sticks and glue, but in order to be able to mass produce it you'll need way way more. It's also almost impossible to communicate to people who never done anything similar.
Have you looked into printing it already pieced together with the correctly colored filament using Mosaic's Palette or Prusa's multi material device? (You'd need a Prusa MK3S for the MMU2.) With the better use of swapping colors in the infill, the wasted filament can be minimized (but still there). Granted, using either of these technologies can cause some extra failed prints and does increase the print times a little. But curious about your stance on this. Thanks for your videos and also for sharing your STLs, from a fellow 3D printing enthusiast.
That would be interesting, but I don't have access to that equipment at the moment. There are still some issues with overhang that would require special attention. The biggest hurdle that I see would be obtaining the correct colors.
Another alternative could be a 3d printer as the Weedo X40 IDEX or similar.
Seems like he would be wasting so much material with a multi color printer. That block of waste would be huge each print.
I'm doing a managerial accounting class right now, we just went over this stuff this week.
Im feeling some "This Old Tony" bibs from this video.... Especially the oven part :)
:) Yeah I'm a fan of his videos.
Thanks for the break down. I think many of us who own 3d printers, sooner or later ponder what it would take to make money doing production runs. Your video helps open the eyes to things many people might not realize.
Overall, this was an excellent video covering the steps necessary for small production runs. This is were making a silicone mold and casting the parts would really help with large numbers. The mold has a sunk cost of course, especially for larger items, but the time saved and the ability to dye the resin a certain color would definitely help. You would still need other steps of course and optimization for a different production method.
Try making the eyes concave so the paint pools in the eyes while keeping the shape. This will save a lot of time and effort as you can calculate how much paint is needed to make the process repeatable.
Recognizing that bots were tracking you and using it to get lower prices is pretty cyberpunk.
Use Big Brother to help you out, kicking 1984 in the behind...
"get the bots smelling ya"
Better way to do the eyes and surrounding black area. Make a 3 piece assembly. Your outer brown ring. There is an oval cut in it for the black area. Print the black area by itself, set it up so it has a flat bottom and is set up like a rectangle. You can paint it by itself, no need for a mask or jig. Print the eyes the same way, you can paint them separate if you want, or find a suitable filament color. Glue everything together.
I really feel the shipping part. I offer a product with lots of variants. Most expensive one with all features is just under 1 kg. If I go from 999g to 1001g shipping cost is doubled and would make it as profitable as one with half the features, but with twice the production time 😅 Gonna save the box cutting part for testing! 😁
NB. For painting 3d parts- an old microwave platter - with turning ring (manual rotating)- or use the motor and a VFD to control the speed - is useful for streamlining the "stack"....
I loved the pizza slice analogy, a good representation of the motivations behind setting your pricing. IE, reducing item price might grow sales, but at what point do the returns diminish.
-Me, a person who currently makes pizza for a living
-Also me, a person who played rollercoaster tycoon as a kid
really, really interresting, I've never see someone explianing and detailling every steps, and costs, like you did. great job!
I love this! By the power of the almighty algorithm, GIVE THIS MORE VEIWS!
Currently working on a DIY rotary moulding machine (think 3d printer hobby machine but with the Rotary Moulding Process). This type of product would be great for it - no wasted material, fully hollow (means lighter for shipping) + one solid shape and is easily repeatable. Awesome project!
would love to see the automation video!
Great video. I make a device for barber shops and even though I have been doing so for 8+ years now I am always innovating the process to make it easier and more profitable and in the end I try to make the product better as well. It's a box and took 16 drill operations (drilling, chamfering, enlarging....) and I ended up with a small tabletop CNC machine, 3D printed a fixture and now it does all but 4 of those operations for me. Keep up the good work.
Haven't finished the vid yet, but the eyes may be easier with an ink stamp pad where you just press the eyes into the paint
I was thinking that. Maybe some sort of specially shaped pad and printed reservoir so it's a slap it on and go process
The usage of Bots for the Boxes is 100% true.
A day or two after I made a purchase for about 1000 odd carton boxes, I get ads with better deals.
Well, I just saved them for next time...
I bought one last time round it’s great recommend to anyone
Thank you :D
Very intersting calculation. One thing you said it is in theory small profit to work for 19-30$ / h well put in perspective that I work as a full stack developer for 5$/h sooo I dream about working for about 20$/h. Nice video, very informative in case of running 3D printing bussines and what it actually takes to do it. Thanks.
Great video! You’ve earned a sub :) What are the modifications you made to the ender 3 besides the tilt for automation? Could you provide links to any stl files and products used? I am assuming you upgraded the hot end for printing with ABS? I’d like to get into printing with ABS and PETGand could use some tips. I look forward to more of your videos. Thanks!
Thanks for the sub! I'll be covering that soon.
No lie the best part of this video was the laser cut music lmfao
Love the optimising steps. I did the same making face shields trying to save time but improving quality :-)
Could be optimized further: you can get a custom colored filament so you don't need to paint anything except the eyes. Then snap fit everything together. Then instead of laser engraving the top, just silkscreen it or make a rubber stamp. Could get everything assembled in a couple of minutes.
"$19 to $30 an hour. So NOT quit your day job money"
What day job do you have? 'Cause uh. That sounds like quit my day job money to me, rich boy. :|
I live in Europe, and here, its definitely a quit my day job money. Muricans are so GODDAMN lucky.
I have an MBA in Entrepreneurship, this video is classroom quality education. You covered 90% of what they teach in MBA school for bringing a product to market. The remaining 10% is (shhh!) trade secrets and marketing. I enjoyed this video so much I want to share with you what this video has inspired.
It is possible to make 3 separate product improvements to this design, without really changing what you're doing all that much.
1. Wireless cellphone charger built in. For those that don't drink coffee and want something specific for their desk.
2. Hidden compartment puzzle box for the sneaky sneaks who need to hide their AA rechargable batteries for some reason or to keep passwords to their super secret digital journal safe. Maybe even a place to snuggly store USB external storage units.
3. My personal favorite, lean into the coffee mug holder design even further and install a Peltier where that cork top goes to keep that coffee hot longer. Make sure it uses USB so it doesn't take up valuable electrical outlet real estate and the cord can be easily and cheaply replaced if it goes missing of becomes damaged.
Each of these ideas would actually increase your labor time and might not actually add enough financial incentive to execute into a realized product design, but it was a fun thought exercise to reboot your product concept into a value added concept. Please...Please, please, please: Keep using this format for showing your projects and keep making videos! Also, consider making a Udemy account to teach this information. Oh look! You already have your first video done. 😂😎
Oh, you'd have to figure out how the Peltier project could work without melting the finished product too to make it work properly. I recommend using a purpose made plastic for the model and having a separate printer with separate heat settings to make that one if you were serious about it. If you figured out how to do all three ideas in one single model? I'd pay $100.00 USD for it and even get a copy of the game to play. Not sure that's worth the trouble for you though. Ask around again.
For the love of God, get a wooden or plastic cutting board. your knife is going to thank you.
knives don't have feelings
you can add a "brim" in the model itself instead of using the slicer's brim for the face part, just make it an "inner brim" this way it won't require any post processing and you can just leave it on, just add a thin ring around the inner edge of the bottom face
I would also design it to clip on instead of using bolts, you have a lot of inner space you can design large strong clips that'll be hidden
Lol in germany we pay like 0,28€ per kw/h
Was meinte er was die Zahlen?
@@DatFunnyPerson 0,07 USD wich is 0,058 Euro per KW/h so in germany we pay around 500% more 😳
I agree with most here, I would print the eyes separately and glue them into a hole you leave when you print the middle part. But great ideas, I've learn that too atm and asked myself how I could automate it.
Lol, who the hell pays that much for something like that?!? 😂
You don't own a single piece of anything from your favorite movie, game, band, artist, etc?
@@NickBair316 That doesn't make any sense. I was referring to "that price, that kind of item". But anyway, still, actually no I don't. Why would I buy some junk? And to that note. If I'd buy something like that, why would I pay excessive price of it?
@@jothain That's just the realistic price of producing something small batch in a developed country. Of course it's gonna cost more to produce something like this when you don't pay the worker $1.50 an hour and make 15 000 of them.
@@finpin928 No it's not. Heck if that thing would be Swiss made it would still be expensive. Just look at the quality of those, they look horrible for that money. I live in more developed country and I don't think anyone would pay that kind of an price here. Which is good imo btw 😂
@@jothain wow you are salty lol. I'm sure plenty of people in your country would pay that price. Sorry things are bad for you right now, I'm sure they will improve!
Great build! What I usually do - and what might be a helpful idea I hope - is to recess the eyes a bit to make a 2mm or 3mm canal. Then I take my color - nail polish with an injector applicator - and simply pool it into the canal. An even coat every time!
I believe the math at 23:25 is a bit off. In the top line, you say you'd need 10.2 3D printers at 130W each, consuming 1326.6W total. This checks out fine. However, you pay for electricity by the KWh (kilo-watt-hour), and your rate appears to be 7 cents per KWh. If your printers take a total of 1.3KW, then you'd be paying 9 cents per hour, not 19$ per hour!
Not trying to take away from this otherwise excellent video, it's a great overview of the cost/benefit analysis involved and iterative design. Great work!
This covers a lot of the key info that many people don't seem to understand when it comes to item pricing. It seems many have the mindset that the end product they get to hold is how the items magically pop out from the get-go. They don't factor in that the material that the items made out of costs money, or the process that is needed to go through to reach that end result, painting, assembly, etc,. Or the fact that many storefronts do take a cut of what it sold for.
So say like for you, you get $30 per item. But how much of that has to go back into the process to continue the making of said items, how much does the site you selling it on takes? You do have to weigh all that in, as well as sort out if what you are offering will even sell and if so at what price range would it sell for.
Awesome end product. Even more impressive was the behind-the-scenes thought process.
1) If you print the center piece with the eyes out of the neon green filament, you can paint it over and then just sand the paint off the raised eyes on a stationary sander rig.
2) Can you tell me more about how you automated the printing with your ender3? Exactly what software did you use and how did you interface that with your Ender3?
Geat video ! One idea to try to make the eyes faster : printing with green filament. You would then paint the body, then the face with a stancil. After painting, just sand off the paint on the eyes with a small dremel tool.
this was inCREDibly interesting to see and watch. very good break down of all steps involved, was like watching an entire business come to life in front of my eyes. well done, really enjoyable, subbed!
Dude this video was awesome and answered some of the questions I didn't even know to ask! You earned this subscriber for sure! I'm tinkering atm but do plan to make it more of a side hustle/fulltime in the near future.
Fantastic production quality and display of information! I can't believe you only have 5k subs. Please keeping making videos and don't give up when it gets tough, this is a million sub channel, I know it will be. Keep up the great work!
I would make the center piece (with the face) in 2 parts, the inner part with the eyes, and a thin outer ring with the oval in it, then just slide it over the inner part aligning the eyes with the oval, couple drops of super glue to hold it in place. That way you can do them in the correct color and avoid a lot of painting. If you want a super smooth glossy finish, acetone vapor smooth the ABS it will look like an injection molded part.
I just came here from a video of turning paper into molded parts, so I might be a little biased. However, I think that might be decent way to go for some parts. You make the mold with 3d printing, then use that to produce 100-200 pieces from scrap cardboard/egg cartons with rice binding it together. Sand the surface of the mold to change the finish of the part, then seal the part itself with paint the way you were doing with the ABS parts.
Also, it looks like you have most, if not all the tools required to start building your own tools/efficiency boosters. Consider the humble foot pedal. With nothing but a cheap microcontroller, a hall effect sensor and a weak magnet, you can add analog control to whatever machine you're building. A heat gun is a good example. A cannibalized heat gun in an aluminum enclosure can be hooked up to a foot pedal such that the foot pedal activates the heating element and controls the fan speed. That would make a great efficiency booster for painting those eyes. (Also, use that stencil with the paint pen. It'll make you much faster.)
I don't know if you're interested in making more one-man product runs. But if you are, such DIY tools are excellent build projects, and you can tweak them to make them better. And if you don't need it anymore, you have salvageable parts to build more tools.
Excllent video. You answered many questions. I am an engineer and a CAD designer and want to setup a small 3d printing business.
When it comes to the eyes you could try rolling the face over a thin layer of paint, provided they stick out far enough but not too far. And you'd have to mask the rest so you don't ruin the brown.
for efficiently painting those greenish eyes just use a plain rubber stamp and green serigraphic paint.
Apply a white layer before the green if you want to achieve a brighter green tone.
You can also attach the eye color pencil to a 3D printer and use it to paint the eyes. To do this, create a suitable shape for the objects and create a GCode.
And do you really need a brim? So far I only print in PLA. And I can do that without it.
Excellent skills. I wouldn't have painted the feet black, the recycled partial logo on the underside cork is lovely to look at in my opinion.
You could get a cricut, cut the eyes area out of vinyl and it could paint/marker it at the same time