Starting with a business plan and a single 3D printer, Zac Hartley has built a profitable company creating jigs and tool accessories. Today, he runs a print farm with 70 Original Prusa machines, featuring custom upgrades and complex systems – all of that without an engineering degree. On the contrary, with a background in business, Zack acquired most of his know-how online and through hands-on, trial-and-error experience. And when he needed management software for his farm? He simply built his own from scratch using AI tools. We had the unique opportunity to sit down with Zack, and he was more than happy to share his journey. A one that just makes you want to build a 3D printing farm of your own!

A businessman with no prior experience in 3D printing

When did you discover 3D printing?

This was probably four or five years ago. I was selling products on Amazon and trying to find new products to develop. I came up with an idea for a product that I thought could be 3D printed. Initially, I had someone else with a 3D printer manufacture it for me. I tried selling it, and the first 10-15 units sold without any problem. So, I continued to buy them from that person and sell them online, mostly through Amazon. Eventually, production couldn’t keep up with demand, so I bought my first-ever Prusa 3D printer for myself. Since then, I’ve continued to reinvest the money back into operations, and now it has grown to over 70 printers.

What was your first experience with 3D printing? Did you find it easy to get into?

My first experience with 3D printing involved buying a very cheap printer off Amazon, and it was definitely a learning experience. I had to manually level the bed, really mess with the filament, and simplify the prints significantly to get them to work. So, my initial foray into 3D printing wasn’t as smooth as it probably could have been. It involved a lot of learning and problem-solving, but it taught me a great deal about how printers work, how to fix them, and what to do when something goes wrong. From there, I’ve been able to grow, upgrade the printers, and now upgrade my operations.

Is it still just a professional thing, or have you used the printer to make something fun?

Yes, I use the printer to mess around a lot; we have a lot of fun with it. We’ve 3D printed a guitar and made some Nerf blasters. I 3D print many organizers for my house and equipment, and we make a lot of fun things to decorate the house or store different items. We try to use the 3D printer as much as we can instead of buying something off the shelf.

Do you share the passion within your family?

There’s definitely a bit of passion for 3D printing in my family. Both my brother and I are pretty involved; we both have some Prusa printers. My parents, not so much – it’s a little out of their wheelhouse – but they support us as much as they can and love seeing what comes off the printers. So, it’s definitely a family affair, though my brother and I are probably the most interested in it.

Can you share part of your background with us? Are you a mechanical engineer or do you have a technical or engineering background?

My background has nothing to do with 3D printing, engineering, or any technical field. I attended school and graduated with a degree in business. When I graduated, we started a business converting wine and whiskey barrels into furniture and decor, which we sold across North America. This helped me learn how to start and operate a manufacturing business. That’s really where things started for me, and that’s my background. Then, when I saw 3D printing and its capabilities, I thought it was the next evolution of manufacturing. I tried to apply it as much as possible, and now it has evolved into a full-time business.

How did your business start? Was it a coincidence or a well-thought-out business plan?

I would say it was more of a coincidence than a set business plan at the time. It was just experimenting with different products, and one of them happened to be 3D printed. This was great because it allowed me to test different concepts and ideas, prototype them, and bring them to market extremely quickly with a very low cost. It enabled me to start a product development business from my home with very few resources, and now it has grown to include a couple of full-time employees and a substantial operation.

Where and how did you learn about performance, maintenance, and how to design all this stuff?

The maintenance, designing, and printing aspects were definitely a big challenge for me. Maintenance knowledge has primarily come from online research, trial and error, and identifying specific issues that arise on my print farm, followed by a plan to mitigate those issues and maintain as much uptime as possible. So, the maintenance side has been a lot of trial and error over time, figuring out what works and doesn’t work for the products I’m printing.

The design side of things is a bit different. I don’t have an engineering or design background, nor much experience with more advanced software. For many of the products I’ve developed or designed myself, I’ve used very simple software, such as Tinkercad, to assemble the products, create prototypes, and test them in the marketplace. If I need to refine the design, improve it, or require a more advanced one, I usually ask someone with that expertise to help. However, for about 90% of it, I can do it myself with some very basic online tools.

Put a number on anything

Watching your channel and Instagram, it’s clear you have everything meticulously set up and calculated. What were your expectations when you started the business? Did you learn how to calculate everything as you went, or do you naturally have a mind for keeping things so aligned?

My thought process behind the numbers in the business is centered on sustainable growth and reinvesting the profits generated by the printers back into operations to further expand. I gained experience in product costs for manufacturing, distribution, sales, and marketing from my previous manufacturing business. So, I applied what I’d learned before to the 3D printing world.

However, there were unique features, such as filament consumption, which I had to learn – often the hard way, by running out. For filament, I created a spreadsheet to track monthly usage, forecast demand for the next few months, adjust for seasonal variations, and help plan when and how much to order. This ensures the farm doesn’t run out, which has been a significant challenge.

Did you calculate the price and profit based on print hours? What was your approach? How did you come to that?

When it comes to the profit from the products I’m printing, my main focus is on profit per print hour. I aim for at least $2 per print hour per machine while it’s running. Additionally, for all my products, I try to set a minimum gross profit of 30% when sold online. The goal is to achieve at least a 30% gross profit and earn at least $2 per hour for every product.

I came to this conclusion because print hours are my primary resource and limiting factor. Therefore, I use that as the core variable to measure how efficiently my printers are operating. The actual number of print hours is my input, and the products are the output. If a product doesn’t meet these metrics, or I don’t see a path for it to meet them during its lifecycle, I’ll discontinue that product and redirect those resources to finding one that does.

Did you start with this model, or did it develop naturally over time?

When I was first trying to figure everything out, my focus was more on gross profit per product. However, I realized that the actual gross profit I was generating per print hour was highly variable – sometimes it was 50 cents, and other times it was $5. I recognized that if I sold a lot of those lower-margin products, I’d be making less money while running the printers much more. That changed my perspective, and I understood the need to ensure I was generating a sustainable amount of profit for every hour the printers were running. That’s why I added profit per print hour as a crucial variable when determining if a product is successful and when setting its price.

What advice would you give someone looking to start a 3D printing farm? Is it a generally good idea? How should they begin, and is there still room in the market?

There’s an endless space for what these printers can do, and definitely room in the market for people wanting to run a print farm. What’s amazing is that as the technology improves, the applications expand. The marketplace we’re in is continuously growing because advancements, like those Prusa is working on, are broadening what we can do, the markets we can serve, and the products we can create.

If you’re just starting out or thinking about it, the best place to begin is with one printer. Develop a product, refine it, get customer feedback, and ensure you have a product-market fit. Then, start printing that product, scale up, make sure you can sell it, and use the profit from those first sales to buy another printer and expand your operation. That’s the best way to get started. The key in the 3D printing space is finding traction – a product that will move or a problem you can solve with your printer – then reinforcing, improving, expanding, and selling it.

Start with one printer, specifically a Prusa, and ensure you have achieved the product-market fit before purchasing the next one. As soon as you do and can make a couple of dollars per print hour, expanding that print farm will become very easy.

Is making money with 3D printing easy?

No, making money with 3D printing isn’t easy, but it is very achievable. The key is to solve the right problem. Look at what 3D printing technology can do and find a problem that either doesn’t have a solution yet or has a solution you can improve upon with 3D printing. When it comes to making money, the best approach is to use this technology to solve a problem for someone else – provide them with a solution, an organizer, or something that makes their life easier. If you can do that, there are many different ways to make money in 3D printing.

Building a community, sharing know-how

You started building a community. What is the idea behind that, and how is it going?

I started building a community for people who want to turn their single printer into a business, a print farm, or something similar to what I’m doing. I feel many entrepreneurs love 3D printing and want to take it to the next level, but might not know the exact steps. I developed a community to help people understand how to turn a single 3D printer into a business or a side hustle that can generate income and offer opportunities for expansion over time.

We currently have over 120 members. Several have started and grown their print farms, and we have tons of available resources. It’s been a great journey, we’ve helped many people, and I’m excited to see what the community achieves as a group—the products we build and the resources we share. It’s really about helping everyone get bigger and better. The market for 3D-printed products is enormous and continues to grow. As the technology improves, the applications for 3D printing broaden, and the marketplace grows. I don’t believe there’s a lot of competition or that it’s saturated; there’s a ton of room. My goal with the community was to help everyone take that next step and grow their business.

What does open-source mean to you?

While I’m not a super-technical person, for me, one of the main reasons I like Prusa is that I can understand it, access it, and control both the software and the printers. I can make changes and modify them as needed. My 3D print farm is set up in a very specific way, and I want to adjust the printers to make them more efficient for my operations, making small changes and maintaining control. Prusa’s open-source model allows me to do that.

To me, open source is like saying, “Here is a tool, and you can use it exactly how you want – adjust it, play with it, change it, modify it, or improve it.” For my operations, that is absolutely crucial. It helps me increase my output, the number of products leaving the farm, and the overall profit. So, open source is a huge, massive benefit for my business.

What are your plans for the future?

Currently, I have approximately 70 3D printers and have space for around 18 more in my current facility. Within three to six months, the goal is to secure a larger facility with a warehouse and ample storage space for filament, pallets, and outgoing products.

I’m also working on software to help me control and manage my 3D print farm – everything from the printers and filament to the actual jobs going through the farm. So, my plan for the next couple of months is to expand the print farm while also focusing on making my printers as effective, efficient, and high-output as possible. With those two approaches, that’s how I plan to grow my business.

How to run a print farm

Let’s talk about the print farm. How much space does it take, and what conditions are there? How do you control the environment?

The print farm currently has 70 printers. Almost all of them are Prusa MK4 or MK4S models, with one CoreXY model – the Prusa CORE One – that I recently purchased to experiment with. The setup is relatively simple: all the printers are on standard cargo racks, with nine printers per rack, lined up in my basement, which measures approximately 1,100 square feet.

For environmental control, I have fans and air conditioning blowing cold air in, and exhaust fans to remove hot air. I also use a couple of air quality sensors and air filters throughout the facility, but the operation is straightforward. The parts come right off the printers, go into a box, and are then packaged and assembled from that box before being shipped out. What’s particularly convenient is that I sell most of my products on Amazon, so I don’t have to hold inventory. Essentially, my operation consists of a massive wall of approximately 70 printers and a couple of packing tables, after which we ship everything out.

What was the biggest challenge?

One of the significant challenges is maintaining temperature control within the room. The printers generate a fair bit of heat, especially with 70 of them, so managing the temperature to ensure a comfortable working environment is significant.

Another major challenge I’d address differently now is the need for much more space for filament storage. I’m buying filament by the pallet, and carrying those boxes up and down stairs isn’t ideal. More broadly, I want to focus on optimizing the movement of materials through the farm. This includes how filament and supplies come in, how filament is loaded onto the printers, and then how parts are taken off, packaged, and shipped out as efficiently as possible, minimizing wasted space, time, effort, and resources.

Ideally, I want filament to come in by the pallet and be placed right next to the printers. Someone can then easily load it, pull the finished products off, take them directly to a packing table for final assembly, and then have them shipped. In my next facility, the goal is to make that entire process as seamless as possible.

How many “farmers” do you have?

Currently, I have two employees on the farm. One works during the day, and the other works in the evenings and for most of the time throughout the week. They are the ones primarily running the farm and controlling the printers. I definitely control the printers and run the farm on weekends or when either of them is off.

My primary focus is on sales, product development, pipeline management, and improvement projects at the farm. For the actual printing, I have amazing help from two great employees who do a fantastic job with the day-to-day operations. This allows me to step back so my primary goal is to focus on growing the business. I focus on sales, product development, partnerships, sourcing high-quality materials, and reducing costs to increase profit and drive business growth.

Did you start with one, two, or three printers? How did the growth progress?

I actually have an Excel sheet where I track the purchase date of every new printer. I started with the first printer, and upon realizing the product was selling and I was running out of capacity, I think I bought my second and third printers pretty quickly. From there, everything was a reinvestment of profits. The farm expanded rapidly to approximately 50 or 60 printers.

The acquisition of the last 20 printers has slowed somewhat. This is because, at my current size, I achieve a greater improvement from optimizing the existing printers than from simply adding a couple more. My focus is now split between adding printers and optimizing the current ones. When I first started, the best way to scale was to simply buy another printer, as it would increase capacity by 50% or even 100%. Now, when I buy a new printer, it only increases total capacity by 1% or 2%. Therefore, resizing files to make them more efficient or using software to enable them to run for longer periods per day has a significantly larger impact than adding just one or two more printers.

Currently, it’s a balance between making the farm and existing operations more efficient and buying more printers to scale up over time. I do have some limitations on space and airflow, though, so I have to take that into account as well.

It sounds like everything comes down to numbers. Do you track numbers for everything?

Yes, absolutely. What’s amazing about 3D printing, and what I absolutely love about this business, is that it’s purely data-driven. You can determine exactly how much filament will be used in a product, you know precisely how long it will take, and you can calculate the exact cost. Everything can be determined with a number. In my previous business, which involved regular manufacturing where a human crafted the final product, there was significant variability.

From a business standpoint, 3D printing is amazing because I can essentially map out the entire business in an Excel sheet and know exactly where I’ll be three, six, or nine months from now. I know my filament position, my cash position, and what sales will look like. I can accurately forecast the business, which allows me to take larger, calculated risks, such as buying new equipment or ordering filament in bulk. Being able to put a number to almost everything in the business is the best thing ever. I love it because there’s less variation and fewer variables to deal with.

As an entrepreneur, it’s very attractive. You can buy one printer, make $2 per hour, run it for 20 hours a day, and make $40. Do that for 10, 20, or 30 days, and now you can buy a new printer. The math behind it is very simple and becomes really fun when you start piling up more printers, see the scale, and forecast what 12 months out looks like. It’s something I truly love about this business.

What was the biggest risk you took in the 3D printing business?

When it comes to risks in the 3D printing business, it’s another aspect that’s quite amazing. My business has grown to significant revenue with over 70 printers, yet there has been very little actual business risk. The risk was mostly personal in the early days, as I was able to reinvest all profits back into the business. We didn’t take on any debt, loans, or outside investors. It has been grown responsibly and profitably by reinvesting in operations, which has significantly minimized business risk.

The inherent risks in printing, beyond your time and the cost of a printer, shouldn’t be substantial. My largest risks nowadays involve operational aspects, such as purchasing a large batch of filament that may ship late or have quantity or quality issues. However, there’s nothing super inherently risky about the business if you start with one printer, find your product-market fit, and scale up responsibly.

The real risk in 3D printing would come from taking on debt, a loan, or an investor, and then purchasing, say, 20 printers without having the sales to sustain them. If you can operate responsibly, ensure you’re solving an actual problem for someone, and grow sustainably, it should significantly reduce risk. Again, you can put a number behind everything and forecast, so you should be able to foresee most issues. If a motor goes down or a nozzle wears out, it’s typically a $10-$30 repair, and you’re back up and running. There aren’t a lot of major financial risks if you do it responsibly and at a pace that matches your entrepreneurial skill level.

How does the setup process of integrating new printers into your farm work? 

When I get a new 3D printer, I make a couple of small changes for my specific operations. My farm only prints in one color (black) and one material (PETG). The products I print don’t have a lot of intricate detail, so I use a larger 0.8mm nozzle. That’s the first change: we put a 0.8mm nozzle on it.

I also print with 5kg filament rolls instead of 1kg or 3kg rolls, so we’ve to make adjustments to how the filament feeds into the printer. We’ve developed our own custom holders and system for this purpose.

Once the nozzle is changed and the filament setup is adjusted, the next major step is to get the printer connected to the software we use. This allows us to connect to all printers from a single central dashboard and control all prints, as well as send jobs to them. After setting up the nozzle, hooking up the filament, and connecting the software, the printer is fully integrated into the farm and begins accepting jobs with just a couple of clicks. The whole process takes about 10 minutes once the printer is out of the box.

These changes allow my print farm to produce our products much faster than if we used stock settings, a 1kg roll, or a 0.4mm nozzle. We make these specific modifications because our products are a bit bulkier and not very intricate, which helps us maximize both the gross profit per product and the profit per print hour.

How many machines have you tested, and why did you choose Prusa? 

When I started my print farm, I surveyed the market and all the different printers available. The primary reason I chose Prusa printers was my search for a reliable option that would last a long time. I didn’t want to constantly replace parts or buy new printers every couple of years. I needed a workhorse that I could rely on for the long term.

Looking at all the options, I saw that Prusa, with its open-source methodology and overall approach, places a strong emphasis on reliability. Crucially, when something does need attention, parts are very easy to replace. This ease of repairability was a huge attraction.

I also love that they are made in Europe, have an amazing story, and are integral to the history of 3D printing. Prusa helped build this industry and initiated the consumer revolution, and I wanted to be a part of that.

So, the number one metric for choosing printers for my farm was reliability, and number two was repairability. The final thing I absolutely love about Prusa printers is their upgradability. My first 12 or 15 printers were Prusa MK3S+ models, and they have all been upgraded to MK4S printers. The ability to upgrade my printers with a relatively small investment, rather than completely replacing them, has been a significant advantage. I’ve printers that are three or four years old, but they operate just like new because I’ve been able to upgrade, maintain, and repair them over time, thanks to everything Prusa has developed.

How much maintenance is required? 

We have two main levels of maintenance on the 3D print farm. The first is a more in-depth routine maintenance. I have eight racks with nine printers on each, plus a few additional printers on the side. Once a week, we remove all the printers from one specific rack and perform general maintenance. This includes cleaning the printer, checking the nozzle, replacing the PTFE tube, wiping down the entire machine, re-greasing all bearings and rods, and tightening and adjusting all belts. After that, we run a full calibration. Since we perform one rack maintenance cycle per week, every printer undergoes this detailed process approximately every two months.

The second level is a more general, frequent check that we do roughly every two or three days. During this process, we inspect all the printers to clean and brush the nozzles, ensure the silicone socks are clean and free of residue, check for any build-up on the ends of the rods, and generally verify that the printer is in a clean, operational state. This helps prevent issues that arise from the more thorough maintenance cycles.

So, it’s a combination: a quick check and clean on all printers every couple of days, and then a detailed, in-depth maintenance and recalibration for one full rack of printers each week.

What is your print success rate?

It’s not tracked very well, and the percentage varies slightly by product, but I’d estimate it’s probably between 90% and 95%, depending on the specific product.

Is electricity consumption a problem?

When it comes to electricity on the 3D print farm, the consumption is much lower than most people expect. For running 70 3D printers, it’s a couple of hundred dollars per month. It’s a bit difficult for me to put a hard number on it due to various service fees and because I also run a Bitcoin miner at home. However, I believe my cost is around 1.5 to 2 cents per hour per printer in electricity.

When I reached about 20 or 30 printers, I had to upgrade the electricity supply to my house to a 200-amp breaker. That has allowed me to expand the print farm as much as I can physically fit printers in the house, so there isn’t much of a limit now from an electrical supply standpoint.

The main area to be careful about, which I learned the hard way, is overloading circuits. If you plug too many printers into the same circuit, it’s very easy to trip a breaker. The solution was to bring in an electrician to run dedicated circuits to different sections. For instance, I have eight racks of printers, and each rack has its own circuit. This setup enables me to manage the entire farm, including starting all printers simultaneously, without any issues.

So, electricity is more about the initial setup than the actual ongoing cost. The cost relative to what you’re printing is extremely low. However, having the right electrical setup to run your printers properly is probably the most difficult and potentially the most expensive part initially.

How do you like the Prusa CORE One printer?

Regarding the print farm and the CORE One, I can’t say that we’ve fully integrated it into our main operations yet. I have 70 MK4 printers, and they are working extremely well and smoothly for production. We actually use the CORE One primarily for product photos, high-detail development, testing, and fit tests, especially when we need to create a product that perfectly aligns with something. Therefore, it’s primarily used for prototyping, photography, and development rather than full-scale production.

I do think it would work very well, and a farm of 70 of them would look absolutely amazing. However, I’m currently pretty committed to the “bedslinger” models, like the MK4S, as they’re working out really well for me. I’m also planning to find a way to automate these printers in the future to eject parts when they’re done printing, and I believe the bedslinger setup is a bit better suited for that in my specific setting.

What is the current state of automation on your farm? Do you have any remote control, monitoring, or other similar capabilities?

When it comes to managing the printers with automation and control, I’ve developed software, which is publicly available, that connects to all printers on the farm, allowing for central control and job dispatch.

For instance, in my farm’s current workflow, we conduct an inventory report every Monday to determine what needs to be printed. We then input these orders into our software, which automatically distributes them to all available printers. The printers start and complete the product. Our employees then remove the parts from all 70 printers and, with a single click of a button, reset all printers to a ready state. The software then redistributes jobs to all printers again until the entire queue is completed. This system makes my operations extremely efficient and allows for very easy and quick employee training, as their main tasks become removing parts, resetting printers, and then packaging and shipping.

What we are currently working on is an addition that, when a print finishes, will send custom G-code to the printer. This G-code will instruct the printer to push the completed part off into a bin and then automatically reset itself to the ready state. The software can then distribute the next job. The goal here is to automate all 70 printers so they can print a product, eject the part, and then restart the next print. This is the future of the software we’re aiming for in the next few months.

Currently, the order queuing system automatically distributes jobs, making my employees significantly more efficient and dramatically increasing the number of hours I can print.

Software? I make my own

What is the story behind your software? Did you make it yourself?

Yes, the story behind the software is quite unique because I developed it myself. I have no prior experience in coding or software development, but the recent emergence of AI tools that can code and create tools for you has been truly amazing. I’ve developed the software completely from scratch, not by writing the code myself, but by utilizing AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok to assemble the code and build the software.

The story of how it started is interesting. I’ve mentioned wanting to make my print farm more efficient, with the primary goal being to increase the number of print hours per day. To achieve this, I initially attempted to hire another company that offered software to connect my printers and automate some of the features I required. Unfortunately, that company couldn’t deliver on their promises or what the contract outlined. I was left with a big problem: I had spent a lot of money with nothing to show for it, and a software that didn’t work.

Instead of trying to outsource it again or find someone else, I decided it was time to do it myself. I spent a couple of hours learning how to use these AI tools and what I needed to do. Over the next two weeks, I was able to build the software completely from scratch, which has dramatically improved my operations.

Can you imagine doing it without AI?

Oh, it would never have happened without AI. It has been a valuable learning experience and a journey. The beautiful part is that because Prusa is open source, I could access the API and see how the printers are controlled. This allowed me to build software that can communicate with and control the printers, dramatically increasing the production and output of the print farm.

So, Prusa’s open-source mentality, coupled with recent technological advancements in AI, has enabled someone like me, with no technical experience or background in software development, to create an entire software from scratch that has a major impact on my operations. We are now starting to release it to other print farms around the world, and it has already had significant impacts on some of our early customers. I’m super excited and proud of it.

For anyone running multiple printers, it’s a significant advantage to control them from a single central location or dashboard. It saves time, energy, materials—everything. Beyond that, when you run printers individually, you don’t get any data. You can’t see your total print hours, the amount of filament you’ve used, or how efficiently your farm is running. But when you connect all those printers to software that can control and track all that data, you suddenly have the ability not only to control your print farm but also to pull valuable data out of it. I can see my exact filament consumption per day, how many hours we’re running, which printer is running the most or least, and how efficiently everything is operating. It provides an immediate boost and also gives you the data you can analyze to further improve your processes.

So, no more walking around changing USB sticks?

Oh, absolutely. The USB stick method is fine when you have one, two, or maybe even three printers. But as soon as you have 70 3D printers and, let’s say, 100 files you need to put onto each USB stick—and each transfer takes a few minutes—it becomes a massive headache. To add one new product, I would have to update 70 USB sticks individually.

The software changes all that. It allows me to upload a G-code file once and distribute it to the entire print farm, starting all 70 printers in less than 30 seconds with just a couple of mouse clicks. This makes a huge difference in terms of labor and employee morale because they don’t have to change 70 USB sticks every time we want to update a file. It also just makes the entire farm much more efficient.

Do you have any future plans, thoughts, or ambitions for the software?

Yes, for the software’s future plans, our main objective right now is to build out the automatic part ejection feature. This means when a print is finished, the software will send a custom G-code to the printer that ejects the part from the bed and allows the printer to automatically restart the next job. That’s what we’re currently working on.

Following that, within the next one to two months, we aim to develop an analytics dashboard. This will allow a print farm owner to see exactly their hours of uptime, downtime, and maintenance. They’ll be able to track filament consumption, manage maintenance schedules for every machine, and extract real, useful data from the software. They can then analyze this data and implement changes to improve their operations’ efficiency.

Looking further ahead, we plan to integrate additional printer models. So, if you have Prusa printers alongside a couple of different brands on your farm, you’ll be able to integrate them all. You can send G-code through the software to all the different printers and manage your entire print farm, regardless of its setup. Currently, the software only works on Prusa printers, as that’s what my farm runs on; however, we plan to expand its compatibility in the future.

Do you have a message for the 3D printing community?

My message to the 3D printing world is to just keep pushing boundaries. We’ve developed new solutions to address an ever-growing list of problems. As technology improves and we develop new solutions and printing methods, the applications for the problems we can solve will continue to expand. So, don’t stop pushing, don’t stop experimenting. Keep getting better, keep improving your skills, buy that next printer, and start experimenting.

What you need to search for is traction – find a solution to a problem that people want to solve. Once you have that solution, that’s what we call product-market fit: where the product actually fixes the problem, and the customer likes it and wants to keep buying it. That’s what we’re looking for as 3D print farmers. That is the golden goose, and that is how you build a business. So, my message to you is: keep experimenting, keep trying, keep testing, and keep prototyping. I’m sure you’ll find it.

Jakub Kmošek and Štěpán Feik