We launched our community hub PrusaPrinters.org three years ago in April 2019 and it quickly became more than just a popular source of high-quality 3D models. There’s ongoing active development of new features (largely based on user feedback), that has led to the introduction of community contests, user groups, events, rewards, and many other activities and tools.
However, there was a bit of confusion among users about whether they are “allowed” to use PrusaPrinters when they don’t have one of our 3D printers. So we started looking for a new name. Say hello to Printables.com!
Printables.com replaces PrusaPrinters.org and keeps its ever-growing library of high-quality 3D models, while some features move over to Prusa3D.com. Our intention is to make the website more open and welcoming to all 3D printer owners and also introduce new features.
Say hello to Printables!
So, the reason for renaming is pretty obvious. By the way, the reason why we originally chose PrusaPrinters.org as a name was because there was an older project (from 2015) made with similar intentions – it featured a blog, various guides, forums, and so on. Back then, it made sense to use an active domain and evolve the concept. And what an evolution it was – check out the infographic below! 🙂
Our goal remains the same, though: We want Printables to be your go-to site for high-quality and useful 3D-printable models, no matter what machine you have. This, of course, requires more than just changing the name – that’s just the first step. For example, the website always required you to sign in with your Prusa Account, however, in the upcoming weeks, we’ll add the option to sign in with your Google or Facebook accounts. There’s already a much wider range of 3D printers you can select in your profile, not just our machines.
Database of high-quality free 3D models
While there are online libraries of 3D models with hundreds of thousands of models, you will usually quickly realize they offer tons of duplicate objects, slightly altered versions of the same model, etc. We’re taking a different approach. We take our time to curate uploaded objects, support individual designers, organize community contests with valuable prizes that motivate creators to come up with something new, fun, and useful. With the website renamed to Printables.com, we’re expecting an influx of new members and models, so the library will grow even faster.
This is why it’s also important to give you the necessary tools and resources to quickly find and organize projects, models, and groups. You can easily create private and public collections of models, upload “Makes” (photos of finished prints) and you can also use the built-in 3D model viewer not just for STL and 3MF files but for G-Codes as well. The viewer is quite powerful and features several different view modes, so you can inspect the model even before you download it. Comments and ratings will also help you decide whether the model is exactly what you’re looking for. Our goal is to provide you with the best database of 3D models.
We’re also finishing a large overhaul of the front page (scheduled for release in the upcoming weeks) and actually a lot more.
An active community is key
While it’s perfectly fine to visit the site just for a couple of quick downloads, if you actually decide to stay a bit longer, you can discover all sorts of additional activities. Active community members can receive both digital and physical rewards – including free spools of Prusament! There are awards for both designers and makers. So even if you can’t design new models, you can simply help others, e.g. by publishing photos of finished prints (Makes) and you can still collect enough points. These can be exchanged for spools of filament or our merch. Sharing Makes is useful for everyone – you’ll let the designer know that you like their model, and other users see how the object looks in the real world and that it is, in fact, printable.
You can learn more about the reward system, badges and points by clicking the spool next to your profile icon in the top right corner of Printables.com or you can read our previous article covering all the changes.
Community members are the most important part of Printables.com, so we want to give creators the motivation and tools to share their awesome creations and also give everyone else the tools to discover new models. The planned social feed overhaul is one of the planned upgrades, so you’ll always have a handy overview of the latest things happening around your favorite designers and creators. We’ll also add detailed statistics for your models and more. These changes are literally around the corner with more stuff coming later this year, e.g., we would love to give designers the option to monetize their models.
Printables.com is being continuously developed by a dedicated team within Prusa Research. One of the key elements was to have everything running on reliable and powerful server infrastructure, so using the web, and searching and downloading models is quick and convenient at all times.
Just getting started
So far, the three years with PrusaPrinters.org have been a great ride! We watched the community grow, share awesome design ideas, participate in all sorts of contests and endeavors – the “Groups” feature allowed people to quickly organize the production of protective face shields during the Covid-19 pandemic. We received tons of feedback and adjusted both key systems along with various bits and pieces to make the website easier to navigate and use. We hope you’ll like it!
We’re looking forward to your feedback and as always: Happy printing!
Hi, I really like what you are doing for comunity. Thats why aloso became PRUSA user. I am new in 3D printing and i found your reward system realy cool. I am learning with my Mini+ and also with fusion360. and i must tell you when i made my fisrt model and upload it, i checked site almost every hour if someone downloadt it and post a make. and when it does i was so happy 🙂
I like your quick contest. even if i am total beginer it motivates me to try and learn new things. Thanx
So why can’t I see my messages and is my latest upload been deleted?
Is this also part of the new name?
Great community! Your guys are always awesome!
> we would love to give designers the option to monetize their models.
pls no
+1
why not?
Personally, I think it’s a great idea! Maybe you can also buy models with prusameters though?
This is actually a really great idea! Even if it is an optional payment (tip the designer style), spending a few prusameters would be a very nice gesture
Exactly my thought as well! That would be a nice option to have…
I agree. Monitization is a terrible idea. It leads to designers spamming links to their models everywhere, and is the reason any mention of MyMiniFactory is banned on the /r/3Dprinting subreddit, for example. Please don’t do this.
Agreed. Knowing you can download anything you find is a huge factor. How about promoting the tipping/donate feature more to stimulate designers instead? Keeps it all free and gives everyone a shot at some coin.
This. There are other sites out there that have paid models. IMO the popularity of Thingiverse and Prusaprinters has a lot to do with the fact that everything is free.
But if you must, and I understand the desire (getting a cut), how it is handled in terms of searching is key. I don’t want paid models mixed in my search results, for instance, keep them separate.
Logged in on my mobile to agree … don’t do this , it will ruin the site . People have plenty of others places to hawk their wares . If you want to offer an “accepts donations” feature , sure I’m ok with that . If you post it it should be free . If it’s not free it’s not necessarily printable .
Note “the name of the site is printables” not “printable , maybe if you can afford it”
Yes this is a bad idea, the reason thingiverse got so popular is because everything is free.
Please promote tipping the creator, that would be awesome, but hiding prints behind a pay wall is definitely not a way to go
If designers can’t monetize, then why would they continue to work on new and better designs? You do realize some of these designs take many many hours to make. Some designers don’t upload their work here for that reason. It’s a better business model to offer the ability to charge.
I would vote for a tip feature, not monetization.
If we were voting…
Great job guys!
If I could change one thing on this otherwise awesome site: Give me an option to disable infinite scroll – I absolutely hate it. Thingiverse is total crap now, but at least they let me decide to opt out of infinite scroll.
But thanks for this great site and your printers 🙂
+1 for the option to disable infinity scroll
+1 for the option to disable infinity scroll
Make it an option. I love the infinite scroll. 🙂
You mention that you curate all uploads. Are you aware that this means safe harbor does not apply and you are liable for all copyright infringement done by your users?
“We take our time to curate uploaded objects” does not mean we curate ALL uploads.
We do our best to steer the community with fun contests, by featuring high-quality models, by building a good relationship with the designers, etc. But it does not mean we manually check every model uploaded to the site.
Is there a way I can upload Timelapse .mp4 files? I saw something about using YouTube (to post videos on your site) but after an hour of frustration I could not figure out how to make the links work. (I don’t have pay account). It would be so much easier just to upload. I think seeing a good Timelapse of a model would a nice addition.
One useful feature that is missing outside of Thingiverse is an OpenSCAD back-end for customizable models. I hope this feature is on your shortlist for Printables.com expansion.
Came here to upvote this. I do all my work in OpenSCAD and have been working on making many of them customizable. Saves the user a lot of hassle/work to be able to customize it right in the website (most of the time its a simple size setting or a text field). Would be a great feature to add!
I lost all of my saved collections with this new website. How can I get access to them?
Another feature that would be nice to add to this site to help promote international sharing:
Some design descriptions are in a language that I don’t read. It would be nice to have those either automatically translated to the configured display language, provide a button next to the descriptions to translate it, or provide a metadata flag to the browser to trigger the browser’s translation helpers. Manually cutting and pasting description texts to an online translator can be done, but really slows down casual browsing of models.
That’s a great idea! Seconded.
I’m fine with enabling monetization, but I have a suggestion for an additional feature:
How about allowing people to tips designers using their unused prusameters points? I think it would be good for community engagement and a great incentive for designers that don’t monetize to really give their work that extra polish.
I just wanted to thank you for this decision! It might sound petty, but some users (myself included) have some issues towards repositories “tied” to a certain brand or printer model.
This new name sounds more inclusive and I hope that it will become the new go-to place for 3D models! I will start migrating all my content from Thingiverse as soon as I get some spare time.
To make things easier, there is a Thingiverse migration tool built into this site. Once migrated the models will still be in draft and you’ll want to edit each one and clean up any migration issues before publishing. This also gives you the opportunity to enhance the descriptions using the formatting tools available and reorganize the files if you want.
What the hell happened to my account during this change? I had 150 ish prusameters, had nearly 50 published prints and was ‘lvl 13’ due to various milestones. I try and log on today and it asks me for a new username and sets up anew account. Not great, Prusa. Please sort out.
mine did work (same credentials as for prusa3D.com). If they don’t work: check for blocked scripts (i.e. Noscript extension), delete cache and cookies. If still not working: support!
Hi, I like printables.com very much. It’s far more rewarding that uploading to thingiverse, although one can still feel that printables is a yet rather small community.
Some suggestions from my side for possible improvements for the prusameter and leveling system:
* uploading makes seems to be more effective to get prusameters than uploading models (there is a model cap of 10, but for makes there is a cap of 10 per month). This I find kind of illogical since creating a model is far more time consuming than printing it. I.e. if I print my own model to show it being printable (which is basically a make for my own model), I get “nothing” extra. Maybe that could be changed/expanded too, since that would encourage publishers to test their own prints (since some of them are not printable at all).
* I do not have reliable statistical data on my models yet (uploaded only 2 so far, more to come), but I got twice as many likes as downloads. No chance for me to get prusameters out of that. maybe make that part more flexible (i.e. 1 like == 10 downloads or something like that)?
* I get levels for downloading stuff, but none for commenting or liking models. Yes, that could be problematic, since spamming likes is easy (but spamming triggered downloads is easy too), but for me as a publisher, a comment or a like is more informative than a simple download. Therefore encouraging more feedback would be nice…
* as a user of a semi custom 3D printer (7 years old, only ~50 models of that type ever made, tweaked mine a lot), uploading gcode is rather useless, since I do not know whether these would work on a Prusa (or another machine, where even Prusa gcodes might be useless), i.e. using standard setting of Prusa slicer nearly kills my old printer (different Z-axis gear). Therefore adding more options to help makers know how to configure their prints would be nice (like adding standardized information about working nozzle sizes, needed support (I typically design my stuff to work without supports), multi color suggestions or layer heights). Atm only gcode is used for extracting that data.
* ATM I need to select “other” for my printer model, nice would be to have the option “custom” (rewards people tweaking their models, DIY rulez) and/or adding my own name or even nickname (mine is a companion for a long time now =), although the Prusa XL will kick it back to second place soon ). Maybe even a “profile” for my printer? Even “standard” printers can be tweaked with custom spool holders, nozzle holders, those funny magnetic motor “fans”, LED lights, casing, … seeing them would be nice too (and maybe some prusameters earned for uploading the printer profile?)
hope any of the suggestions might be interesting for you…
Please don’t add the monitizing option.
This will lead to a lot of people wanting a piece of the pie and even the most basic designs will become payable which in turn will lead to less visitors.
Part of the success of the library and any community is the ‘free’ aspect.
If you must, at least, exclude those models from digital & physical rewards – as an ‘incentive’ to post free models.
Although I can rely to the name change for the reasons given, marketing wise, printer sales would likely be higher with the previous name.
+1!
I’m glad you are making improvements, but every time you make major changes, my account is lost. I had to make a new one to post this. I can find my last profile and the prints I have uploaded if I find one of my files and click on the designer icon. But I can’t edit those files. Is there something that can be done about this?
I’d also like to have dark mode for the site if possible
Yes, 100x yes to Dark Mode. For the love of my eyeballs.
Yes, please – dark mode.
I am sure I am not the only one that noticed some migration issues to the new site. I lost most of my message history and about two weeks of download points. The message history had some good support tips. Is there a fix planned?
Tags and categories should be clickable in the model page.
I can’t find a feedback option on the website, maybe that would be useful to add? I guess the idea is that people will use Twitter and such to provide feedback, but I kinda don’t want to use any of these social network sites.
(But if anyone reads this, can you allow uploading of SVG files? I want to upload my source files, and some of my rendered STLs use SVGs to define curves.)
you can comment models, or do you mean feedback to the site itself? The latter would be very interesting 😉
Excellent new name! I am glad I migrated my stuff here from Thingiverse. This is a nice environment.
HOWEVER:
The video says the site is evolving based on user feedback. Where, exactly, do I leave this feedback? There is no contact link I can find on any page on printables.com. Feedback I have left in the forum is seen and responded to by other users like me, not by anyone actually involved with developing the site. Is there any ‘official’ place (preferably public) where I can make suggestions or report bugs?
I liked the previous name because I knew everything on the site would fit in the prusa ecosphere. I don’t browse tingieverse or places like that, because I don’t know if it’ll even print on my printer, and often it’s just renders.
As someone with a prusa machine, the prusa site was the go-to place, and it felt like higher quality. Generic name doesn’t.
Also, I am highly against monetization, but I also understand that it’s not free to host this site and a small cut would help a lot towards covering the bills.
In “worst case”, maybe you could donate (not pay) with prusameters to people you like, but then I’m sure a few selected people would just bot the whole system and ruin it for everyone.
Printables keeps getting better with every new update, I hope it manages to become the go-to 3D model repository on the web. Keep up the great work!
There’s just one thing I miss on this website: the ability to browse makes. On other websites, you can randomly find really cool models that you didn’t even know existed by looking at other people’s makes – but you can’t really do that on here unless you manually go from user to user and check their makes, which is a bit clunky. It’s really hard to find random things on here, imho, because everything that isn’t new or featured can’t really be found unless you explicitly search for it.
I am, too, wondering where to leave feedback. I posted mine at https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/postid/601328/ , and only now realized I can comment here, too. So forgive me for crossposting this comment of mine (which has received a couple likes):
Hi printables.com team,
after having had an overall great experience in moving my designs over from thingiverse a while ago, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your recent improvements. printables.org is a great choice for a more neutral site name, and “models” is a much less confusing term than “prints” (or even “things” 🙂 ).
So, while I think that printables is by far the superior site, there is only one thing I really miss from thingiverse. I’m talking about the dashboard, which will not only inform me about new likes, collects and makes, but also exhibit which users liked, collected and made my designs. So it’s not only a simple counter, but a great way to learn about and get into contact with users who share similar interests or who are doing similar work. Personally, I find such an element of social contact much more rewarding than a (surely nice) reward system driven by algorithms. Oh, and while I’m at it, the ability to follow keyword tags and the statistics were great thingiverse features, too, at least when they were actually working.
So I wonder if you have any plans to add a similar features, particular similar to the thingiverse dashboard. I think it would greatly help make printables.com a less anonymous place.
Jan
PS: +1 for not monetizing models. In my view it would put an end to the chances of printables dethroning thingiverse.
Last day I made the mistake of creating an account on this website… Ten minutes later I managed to import 4 of my thingiverse models (hell if I know why I even did this..).
And 5 minutes later, 2 of them have been already “deleted by an administrator”. No warnings, no justification, nothing.
So I tried to delete my account and forget about it. Impossible!!!
Sent a message to the contact address. Nothing. Tried to use the live chat and asked politely to have the account deleted, and the guy there even mocked me saying “he would contact the technical stuff” about this. One day later, I still have my account on this stupid website.
The only 3D model that is worth uploading here is a POOP.
it looks like you are not alone:
https://www.thingiverse.com/groups/thingiverse/forums/site-issues-and-feedback/topic:54488