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Comment by h4waii | Hacker News Reader

I currently manufacturer a fairly niche product with nothing but a 7 year old $250 3d printer, some off the shelf parts, and a bit of custom electronics. Very high profit margin, as I am the only producer of this item (!).

I'd love to move to a more "robust" process, but options for materials and widespread access to 3d printing provides a lot of versatility for a single-person business where I want to control the entire product and process end-to-end.

Just need to find your niche.

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How does making your own product on a home 3D printer compare to the cost per unit of having something like Shapeways or similar do it? Out of curiosity, I took my design for a Dremel gig that is about 4 - 5 hours of total printing time (biggest part is 3 hours, and several 1/2 hour pieces), and a single unit cost from an online quote was roughly $35. Plus there is a good selection of materials, including metal options (much more expensive though), but biggest advantage would be consistency of builds (I still find 3D printing at home to be finicky at best).

The material costs for 3D printing are really small. A 1kg spool of PLA is in the order of 20-30 USD, and most 3D prints have only a small amount of infill, so they're surprisingly light for their volume.

For example, I designed a set of sprockets to drive my blinds, and the total weight of the sprockets to drive 3 sets of blinds is less than 15 grams of plastic. This goose-shaped figurine is about 35g of plastic: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3906053

The labor costs aren't, however. I've helped maintain various maker spaces. Most 3D printers were nightmares that were constantly breaking down. The most reliable we've found have been the Prusas, and even they require regular work. We have 4 at the moment, and at any given time at least 1 is usually down for some reason or other.

For my application, it's much cheaper and I have the added flexibility of being able to adjust my design and rapdily prototype should the other components need to change due to unavailability -- I have already had to do this.

For something that costs me $0.17 at home, Etsy people want to charge upwards of $4 plus shipping and Shapeways or the like are $20+.

I’m very intrigued, as I have a couple ideas for things I could manufacture with my 3D printer + some custom electronics too, but have never invested the time into. Could you by any chance please share what you’re making? Or just a rough idea if you want to protect your niche? Thanks

I sell the only "generic" version of an item that is both costly in money and time to obtain.

Imagine you had a bunch of arcade machines with a proprietary button to turn each on. You can buy the button, but the manufacturer requires their service people physically install and bind it your arcade. Most operators want multiple buttons cause they always break, but they also don't want to deal with downtime during replacement.

I sell the button for 1/3 of the cost with modifications allowing anyone to install it.

Thanks for explaining! That indeed sounds like quite a niche. Can I trouble you to ask how you discovered this niche? Is it very difficult to interface to these propriety systems?

I saw the need after wanting something similar, but nobody was offering it. Guess I have some cross-domain knowledge to know it was possible to do.

For me, reverse engineering it was easy, the most difficult part was/is sourcing electronics with custom specs.

This is basically how Lulzbot started: 3d printing parts for 3d printers. I know at one point they were experimenting with making molds and pouring parts, I think out of resin. But when I toured their new facility a few years later, they had a giant farm of 3D printers, so I gather that didn't work out.

I have since gotten into 3d printing and have printed molds and poured silicone with good luck. Some of that silicone has been the final part, some were then used as molds for pouring resin in. I've even added glass fiber to some of that resin before pouring to make some pretty sturdy parts.

Maybe some of the parts you are 3d printing now could be done with resin? Bondo makes a product with glass fiber in it, but most of the parts I'm doing are fairly small, and the bondo has long fibers in it, when I make my own fibers, I just cut fiberglass and can make it whatever length fiber I want.

Thanks for this suggestion!

I have looked at SLA printing and "bench/desktop" injections molding setups like MicroMolder, but I've ruled those out cause I don't have enough ventilation or appropriate space for handling resin -- I don't actually do this in a garage, but a spare room.

C'mon Jack, the resin fume high is like a bonus! :-)

That fiber reinforced Bondo is some pretty nasty stuff in the fume dept. If you really wanted to go that direction you could vent out a window or use some active carbon filtration I presume. But it starts adding up, depending on the quality you need you might also need a pressure/vacuum vessel as well and a pump.

I've managed without, for my micro volume of personal stuff I do.

If it's custom Guitar Hero guitars I'd like to get in touch to buy one. If not, I hope someone reading this does.

I've thought of making various custom (and ruggedized) game peripherals. The electronics and switches I could do (assuming the ICs are available), but designing housings to be 3d printed might be tricky.

For a guitar, however... possibly having the body made of wood like a real electric guitar could be a selling point.

I've always thought the way to go is take a normal controller say, and tear out the internal electronics, replace the switches if needed with stronger/better ones, and put it in a custom 3D printed housing.

There are plenty of guides for 3d printed guitars specifically, and from the perspective of someone who's never 3d printed anything they don't seem too complex. Not sure about other controllers though.

How did you discover the market for this product? Are you part of some interest-based-community whose members want/need this part?

I scratched my own itch.

I wanted the product and knew others in the industry would too. Once I was able to get it in the hands of a few operators to see and use, it started selling "organically" through word of mouth.

I know what they do. They make aftermarket attachments for simulated racing gear

How did you come to have the skills to design and build whatever it is you manufacture? I'm guessing you have a mix of mechanical and electrical background.

I always have ideas for little products (some involve electronics others not) I'd like to build, but how to go from raw idea in my head to working assembly, I'm lost on: choosing motors, control board, mechanical reliability, etc. Maybe I just need to read some ME books, but if they are like math and physics texts, there is gulf between the text how to do build something practical.

I have a background in electrical engineering, but a) it's 20 years out of date (I got the degree and immediately went into software), and b) my training was somewhat niche in that I focused on microprocessor design. So I'd never (for example) learned how to lay out a circuit board, or deal with mixed digital & analog effects (well, at least not at the scale of a PCB).

Recently I had a small project idea that involved a pretty basic PCB. I was surprised at how easy it was to teach myself board layout (using KiCAD) and several related skills. You can get one(ish)-off PCBs manufactured by PCBWay or OSH Park on the cheap. I haven't finished the project yet (supply chain issues), but I'm pretty sure it'll be successful, and fairly cheap, considering.

There are lots of resources online if you need more external help learning. Two I was pointed to (but haven't really dug into too deeply yet) are All About Circuits (https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/) and Ultimate Electronics (https://ultimateelectronicsbook.com/). For the more physical aspects, YouTube has been a great resource -- for example I needed to solder a 5mm x 5mm QFN IC to a breakout board, and didn't want to spend the money on a high-end rework station. A random video on YouTube taught me how to do it with some flux, solder paste, and a cheap hot air gun I bought on Amazon.

Next I'm going to look into getting a 3D printer, and learn how to design stuff for that. I expect the learning curve there will be higher (at least for me), but I don't see it as out of reach.

> Next I'm going to look into getting a 3D printer, and learn how to design stuff for that.

I'm in the high power rocketry hobby and a 3d printer was a game changer for me. I have a prusa i3 mk3s+ and can't recommend it enough. For software i originally started with onshape but then went to Fusion360 because that's what everyone else in the hobby uses. Learning curve is steep but there's tons and tons of good material to help you learn. My workflow is Fusion360 then PrusaSlicer then save to sdcard then print. You can really optimize further but i don't sell 3d printed parts so it's good for me.

On the other hand, i do have a big arse laser and i stood up a little website and sell a simple cutting service to my buddies in the rocketry hobby. I like my website, i have no database! I actually use some metadata features of the stripe api for my order database hah.

https://oakclifflaser.com

It's a little hyperbolic, but the idea was too good for me to ignore, so I had to do it, learning curve be damned.

I would like to hear any advice you/others have about finding a product in your niche to manufacture!

usually you find a market by scratching your own itch.

helps if you have breadth of knowledge and experience in a variety of fields also. interdisciplinary solutions still have plenty of untapped market potential

other than that there is no magic formula that i know of. its kind of one of those "if you have to ask..." type things.

To expand on this, make sure you itch like people with lots of money but no time/knowhow.

For example, hang out at small-town airports or boat harbors, or with lawyers and doctors. If you can find some small part that would help them use their boat, then $300-500 for it might not even be an extreme price especially if they see you using it first.

(This is not an argument to go buy a boat and plane).

Riders of high-end motorcycles as well. People absolutely love customising their motorcycles with things like GPS mounts, bigger/smaller windshields, auxiliary lights, footpeg extensions to make the bike more comfortable for taller/smaller riders, more comfortable seats, etc etc. The market for luggage and luggage mounts is probably quite well served, but especially for rarer or older bikes, it can be difficult to find the more obscure accessories.

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