Running a successful 3D print farm seems straightforward at first glance - acquire printers, create products, and start selling. However, many print farm operators find themselves struggling to scale despite having quality products and steady demand. The reality is that behind the scenes, several hidden challenges can severely impact your ability to grow. Understanding and addressing these five key obstacles can mean the difference between a thriving business and one that barely stays afloat.

Challenge #1: Too Many Options

Many 3D print shops pride themselves on the customizability of their products, offering a number of colours, sizes, and even add-ons for each product. While this may seem like a good way to make sure customers can get what they want from your store, each variation adds compounding complexity.

Let’s use an example:

Say you sell box sets of ornaments. On your product page, customers have the choice between:

• 5 colour options: red, green, blue, gold, or silver
• 3 size options: small, medium, large
• Optional add-on: matching tree-topper (for an additional fee)

At first glance, this seems reasonable. A few colour options mixed with a couple size variations and an optional tree-topper doesn’t sound like too much work. But a closer look reveals complexities - even though there are only a couple options, there are actually 45 different SKUs in this single product, and anywhere from 6 - 18 print files.

With so much complexity in a single product, you have to spend a lot of time keeping things organized, keeping you tied to your production and sucking up time that could otherwise be spent on scaling and strategy.

‍Challenge #2: Mixing Business Models

‍Not only are 3D prints themselves highly customizable, but the overall operation of a 3D print farm can be very flexible. It’s not uncommon for a 3D print farm to split their time between high-volume production and one-off orders from an ecommerce store. While this flexibility enables farms to try out different models and assess their success, there’s a reason that most businesses tend to choose a model and stick to it.

The problem with running multiple models in parallel is you’re essentially running two separate businesses on the same farm, which splinters your time and focus and can make tracking a nightmare.

To deal with this, you can of course simply go all in on the side that gets you higher margins and volume. Start decreasing production on one side to increase on the other, and focus on attracting new business to your chosen model instead of maintaining business on your less profitable one.

If you find that mixing models works well business-wise (maybe larger customers find you first through your shop), the best way to make it more manageable is to automate printing and tracking. Our 3D print farm management and automation software, AutoFarm3D, has order management built in, so you can track high-volume production runs as a single order, alongside one-off orders from your shop. It integrates directly with your printers and updates in real time, so you always know exactly where each project is at. Additionally, we offer a fully integrated automatic part ejection add-on that allows your printers to auto remove (and start) prints 24/7 without an operator present.

‍Challenge #3: Endless Experimentation

‍3D print shop owners are often highly skilled in design or engineering, which means they enjoy experimenting. Often that means exploring new niches or designing new products.

If you’re just starting up and haven’t yet found a niche that has proven successful, this experimentation is the name of the game. But as soon as you find a spark of success in a given area, it’s much more beneficial to dive into that and double down, rather than continuing to divide efforts. Otherwise, you risk falling into the trap of endless experimentation that drains your time without paying off.

A good strategy to balance experimentation with your primary profit-driving tasks is to set a limit on the number of bigger projects that can be open at a given time. If most of your business comes from your online store that sells custom dog bowls, and you’re interested in getting into the market of self-draining planters, consolidate work associated with your shop so that you can set dedicated time aside each day to R&D related to the planters. Don’t allow yourself to start any other new projects until you’ve designed and tested the planters - doing so gets you into the endless experimentation trap.

Challenge #4: Pricing Strategy

‍It’s common for 3D print shops to price their products by looking online at competitors pricing and making theirs similar. Market research is an important part of pricing strategy, but it should never be the entire strategy.

To make sure your pricing is sustainable, it’s better to approach it the other way. Start with your costs (material, printer time, labour) and figure out what a realistic price would be. Then, either figure out how to increase the value of your product to justify a higher price point, or figure out how to lower that price to be competitive in the existing market.

It’s absolutely critical that you include your own labour time when costing our prints, because otherwise you’re running a charity, not a business. If you’re not getting paid, your business can’t afford to run.

Let’s run a quick scenario:

Say your filament spools cost $15.00 each, you charge $0.50 per printer hour, and your hourly wage is $30/hr. Each print takes at least 5 minutes of your time because you have to start them, remove them, and cost in time taken to change filament. For a 2-hour print, that puts your baseline cost at ~$4.00.Each order also takes 10 minutes to pack, ship, and process/update, so an additional $5.00 in service fees is spent on each order.

To make selling a print worth it in low volumes, it should cost at least $9.00. If the market you’re in tends to fall below the $9.00 price point, you have 3 clear places to look at reducing costs: reduce your work, reduce the material used, or reduce the print time. Since your wage makes up $7.50 of the $9.00, it’s probably best to start with reducing your workload. Check out our article on setting systems to learn more about how to do this.

Keep in mind: if your competitors charge less, it’s almost certainly because they don’t pay themselves. As the owner of a 3D printing business says in this article, that practice will lead to those people running themselves out of business.

Challenge #5: Unclear Success Metrics

‍How do you know if you’re on track to hit your goals? How do you know if you’re ready to scale?

Without pre-defined targets/metrics, it’s almost impossible to know where to go next. Decisions, like buying new printers, are made on the fly, often without adequate planning or infrastructure in place to handle the additional workload they bring.

Setting goals with specific outcomes tied to them, and then creating systems that will help you reach these goals, will give you a much clearer understanding of how successful your print farm really is. Check out our article on setting up systems for success to find out how you can do this.

The Path To Success

‍The path to success in running a 3D print farm requires more than just technical expertise and quality prints. By addressing these five challenges head-on - streamlining your product options, focusing your business model, managing experimentation, developing sound pricing strategies, and establishing clear metrics - you can build a more efficient and profitable operation.

Remember that running a successful print farm is a marathon, not a sprint. Success comes to those who take time to implement systems and strategies that support sustainable growth, rather than getting caught in the common traps that hold many print farms back. With the right approach, you can transform these challenges into opportunities to get ahead of your competition.