Back in April of 2021 I had just got a 3D printer and was getting bored printing other people’s designs.
I decided to learn CAD myself, fusion 360, it was quite a steep learning curve at first!
The first thing I made was version 1 of this joint and lighter case for kayaking. The top of the case looked like a frog face so I called it the FrogCase 🐸. I posted about it on Reddit at the time just to show it off and a bunch of people wanted the model and wanted me to print it for them.
So a business was accidentally born 😂 I started writing down people’s info in a spreadsheet but then eventually gave in and made a Shopify store.
The beauty of 3D printing is that you are not stuck making one product forever. The sales slowed down after a couple years, but the phone cases I made started picking up!
Don’t get me wrong the most I ever made in a month was $1,000 (average is $300). I’m definitely not getting rich off this but it’s letting me save a tiny bit in this wild cost of living area. And it’s fun to make new products!
Some of my products were born from suggestions from people who do not have the time or know-how. I love being able to bring something from an idea to a thing you can hold and that functions well. It really builds a sense of self-efficacy that I needed.
If you are at all interested in creating your own designs from scratch I suggest you start today! Start small, just watch some videos and lurk in different CAD subs, eventually it will start making sense. Before long you will be able to go from idea to prototype in your hands in an hour. It feels like magic.
I have completely ditched Reddit so I will be here now solely! Please let me know if I post too much lol
If anyone wants the Frog Case files, or the king size version, just let me know and I’ll send you each a one-time link. I just don’t want to have it permanently hosted online just in case.
I love it. I’m waiting for my bonus to come in at the end of the FY and I’m going to buy myself a 3d printer. In the mean time I’m shopping around for different CAD software to figure out the best balance between learning curve, features, and price. Nothing in the sweet spot yet.
Keep posting!
Thanks!
Well price is easy, Fusion 360 is free for personal use! Any idea what kind of printer you’re looking at?
Yes but I’m finding that it makes me save my projects to their cloud which makes me feel like they’re trying to lock me in. And that I’d need internet access to work on a project.
Anyway, I’m pretty set on getting the Bambu Labs A1 with the AMS. But I’m open to having my mind changed.
yeah that part is not ideal. you can save your projects as Step files as well so they are locally editable. I agree it isnt ideal though.
until you switch computers and boom you have all your projects.
That is an excellent choice for multicolor printing. Just keep in mind the hardware is proprietary so you can only get parts from Bambu. Nozzles, specifically. For tinkerers I’d suggest a creality K series, it gives you root access to change everything about how it works. Bambu if you want it to ‘just work’
I’m going to second fusion 360 here. Yes, it is cloud based but if you really want to you can save the .f3d files locally as well, in addition to the step files. I’ve tried a few open source alternatives and none have really come close :(
Yep they absolutely are. Not to mention it doesn’t work at all without internet, which is completely ridiculous.
I tried FreeCAD but it won’t run on Linux so I have to run it on my iMac. Then I looked up a tutorial and step 1 was “click this button” and I looked for this button for 20 minutes and couldn’t find it so I gave up.
FreeCad 0.19.2 works perfectly on my i7 Mac Linux mint 21.3 and has been doing so since I dumped macos last year.
…cool?
Give onshape a look. If you’re using it personally it’s free, only all your save files are public. There’s a lot of free training courses that are really well done and easy to work through.