Selling 3D prints on Etsy sounds like a simple way to profit off your designs, until suddenly you’re a year in, have 15 printers, and are struggling to keep up. 

It’s not all designing and selling, there are so many little tasks in running a 3D print farm that add up to make your days busier than you thought was possible. Success on Etsy lies in the details - quick fulfillment, high-quality design, and good customer service are paramount to a good rating which determines your store’s visibility - so it’s incredibly important that you have time to focus on improving those elements. 

But how can you do that when your print farm is pulling you a million directions?

Why 3D Print Shops Are Different

Etsy is by nature a boutique platform that focuses mostly on high-quality homemade goods. When you hear someone say they run an Etsy store, it tends to conjure images of them peacefully handcrafting a necklace or knitting a scarf, smiling at their computer as they respond to customer queries, and putting the final sticker on the outside of their packaging to ship. But selling on Etsy can be deceptively complex and time-consuming.

What you don’t see in these images is the number of small but infinitely important tasks that shop owners undertake, like setting systems in place to reduce turnaround times or negotiating shipping prices or testing out different ways to optimize their storefront for visibility.

Add a 3D print farm into the mix and you have a complex operation filled with dozens of little tasks on which your operation hinges. Things as simple as removing prints quickly or improving a design can be the difference between a 2 and 5 star rating, and can dramatically impact your ability to price your products fairly while maintaining demand. And most print farms don’t just sell on Etsy, they have other platforms to worry about as well, which makes their time even more limited and valuable.

Trying to provide a boutique experience for customers while juggling production and multiple storefronts is no easy feat, but there’s a way to make it much more attainable.

The Key To Success: Automate Repetitive Tasks

Many 3D print farms have figured out how to automate certain pieces of their operation, like expense tracking or customer response. Your repetitive tasks don’t end with the business side of things, though; there are a number of small things you do multiple times a day to keep your farm running, and they can be automated too.

Take removing prints as an example. If you have 15 printers and mostly do 3 hour prints, you have quite the task cut out for you - to maximize output you’d have to make 8 trips to the printer per day (at least 2 of which would be in the middle of the night) and you’d be removing 120 prints total. Even if each print took just 1 minute to remove, that’s 2 hours taken up each day.

Getting your printers to automatically eject prints upon completion, then start the next one once the bed is clear, would save you 14 hours per week. Not to mention those 14 reclaimed hours used to be scattered across each day, so you couldn’t get more than a 2.5 hour block of uninterrupted time without having to pick up prints again. Now you can schedule them as you choose.

This is just one example, but there are a number of other small tasks that add up on top of that. Things like keeping an eye on the first layer, checking in for failures, trying to eyeball if there’s enough filament left, or deciding which print to start first to minimize lead times are sometimes so automatic to us that we don’t even think about doing them. But they take time, energy, and attention nonetheless.

Push Your Shop To The Next Level

So many little tasks add up quick, and automating them frees up substantial time for the more important things. With these off your plate you can focus more on analytics, pinpoint exactly what needs to change to up your ratings, and hone in on that. Maybe you redesign your whole product line for higher quality and faster printing. Or you reach out to past customers for reviews/testimonials to display on your storefront. Or maybe you do a deep dive into Etsy’s seller articles to figure out what on your store can be further optimized.

However you spend this extra time is up to you; just spending more time focusing on improving your business (instead of working inside of it) will get you results you never thought possible. We’ve seen 3D printing business owners have “aha” moments after automating that have made their business successful enough to replace their day job.

Are you ready for that to be you?

If you’re ready to take your 3D print shop to the next level, check out AutoFarm3D™, our end-to-end automation solution for 3D print farms of all sizes, from small businesses to high-volume productions. To learn more about how AutoFarm3D can help your 3D printing business hit your goals, please don’t hesitate to contact us.