3D printer farm

Kimball Union Academy: Teaching 3D printing during Covid-19

AstroPrint Staff

The Covid virus has brought real challenges to 3D printing educators. In a typical 3D printing lab, students congregate around 3D Printers as they wait for their prints to finish. They share computers, sd cards and so on…

Giving a 3D printing class seems impossible these days with the new social distancing standards. Some schools have simply decided to close their 3D printing labs, letting the printers collect dust.

Others, like Kimball Union Academy, have decided to use AstroPrint to keep 3D printing in their curriculum. And, as we’ll see, this new need has led them to drastically improve the way they teach 3D printing.

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How to start a Business with 3D Printers

AstroPrint Staff

During the COVID crisis, many people put their 3D printers to work to print personal protective equipment for the healthcare personnel, proving the ability to quickly create a new design and bring a product to market.

As traditional manufacturing is now taking over to full-fill those needs, many people that volunteered to print PPEs are now wondering what other things they could do with their 3D printers. The good news, is that there are lots of business opportunities.

How to make money with 3D Printers

We were sold on the hype that 3D printers would be in everyone’s home. The reality is that for the average householder, it’s still way too hard to print stuff, let alone useful items. The technology, the materials, the ease-of-use and the content infrastructure around these machines are not there yet.

Desktop 3D printers came down in price dramatically and China flooded the market with cheap 3D printers, allowing almost everyone to gain access to this technology. Meanwhile, the media has turned its attention to industrial technologies after seeing that the people buying low-cost 3D printers are hobbyists that use these machines to make gadgets and figurines that mostly end up in their home shelves if not in the trash.

But the media is overlooking one thing. Many of these hobbyists that have been experimenting with 3D printing technology are also entrepreneurs. Many of them are turning their hobbies into businesses.

Thanks to having over 100.000 3D printer owners in the AstroPrint platform, we are witnessing this emerging trend from a privileged position. We’ve seen how some AstroPrint users went from tinkering with one printer to now run a business with a farm of 30+ printers.

Low-cost 3D printers are allowing people to start their own manufacturing business from home and the digital infrastructure is there for them to find customers. In this post, we’ll give some examples of people that grew into a 3D printing business and the key practices that made them successful.

Ready start your own home-built manufacturing facility with a bunch of low-cost 3D printers?

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How to Set Up a 3D Printer Farm to Sell Cookie Cutters

AstroPrint Staff

Since we print on demand, we can sell zero of a design and it doesn’t cost us anything other than my wife having fun sketching it. If I put a product online and it doesn’t sell, we don’t lose anything.

Mike Benner

Mike and his wife Shey are the founders of Sheyb, an online store where people can find custom 3D printed cookie cutters. They make their own designs and print them on demand. Currently, they have a farm of 30+ printers and their business keeps growing.

In this interview, Mike tells us about:

  • How they started their 3D printing cookie business.
  • How they manage and monitor their 3D printer fleet.
  • How they leverage social media to drive sales.
  • Where Mike sees other business opportunities for 3D printing entrepreneurs.
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TrainLab: How a Toy Manufacturer Uses AstroPrint to Run a Business

AstroPrint Staff

TrainLab, a startup toy manufacturer, designs and makes their own toy parts using desktop 3D printers. Like other entrepreneurs, they found a niche where 3D printing made sense and started a business around it.

They started making train track adapters and connectors for kids, selling them on Ebay, Amazon, Etsy and on their own online store.


In this post, Scot Refsland, founder of Trainlab, tells us about how they leverage AstroPrint software to maximize their 3D printer fleet productivity and scale their business.

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