I was a homebrewer for many years, and a huge portion of us wanted to go pro or did.

Most weren’t prepared for what it meant to turn a hobby into a profession. It’s a really good way to turn something you love into a chore.

Printers are now closer to appliances than custom machines, and there are no shortage of them available.

So no, you’re not wrong to want to start a business. You would be facing a tough market though.

I’d say the only way to succeed at your dream is to actually do it, but at the same time I agree that there’s plenty of competition and 3D printing has become so accessible over the last couple of years.

Ive found a little niche of a product that I customize and print while a buddy of mine handles the sales aspect of it. I print them out and sell them to him at a fixed rate and then he sells them to people for at least double what he pays me. He tried to bring in a guy to ‘invest’ in us but after talking with him it didn’t really make sense for what we’re doing. I’m perfectly happy to keep things small scale and I’ve already made enough to cover the cost of my Bambu X1C. I think like others said you can really destroy a hobby by trying to turn it into a business and that’s not something I want to experience.

Maybe it would make the most sense to start out with what you have and build the business as needed. There’s no reason to start out with 10 printers if you don’t have any customers. Maybe start with one and build your print farm out as needed when it makes sense. If you’re planning on selling a product and not print services, there’s nothing dictating that you need the ability to manufacture high volume immediately. Maybe try printing a bunch of the item over weeks/months and then testing the waters with how quickly they sell.

I’m not in this business, but I have purchased prints from a print farm before. There are already at least 4 large, high quality printing companies that offer to print any model in any material. I think most of the competition is now on speed and price. There are also many smaller printers I have purchased from. Most offer ~10 products, have them already printed, and sell those items to fulfill a specific need. As far as I can tell, those smaller printers either design their own models, or paid for models that are not readily available. Once model files are available, the general purpose printing companies can deliver the same part.

Unless you have ideas for models no one has made before, and you want to try to profit as much as possible off those, I don’t see the upside to a small print farm.

What value or expertise are you imagining that you would be providing that wouldn’t be available to somebody downloading a model file and bringing it to a community library that has a 3d printer?

That’s not a rhetorical question and the answer isn’t automatically no. There is significant value in making things easy and convenient for people, and that is far from the only option available for you to add value. If you can answer that, and the value you are adding is significant and/or involves skills or tools or equipment that would not be readily available to most people, you may have a business case, but you need to be able to answer that before anyone can really assess the practicality of your dream. But you do have competition, a lot of competition, and that means you need to be ready to compete, and it’s never going to be a sure thing. Statistically most startup businesses fail. But I think that’s because a lot of them don’t go in with a full understanding of what it takes to make an idea into a business. Money doesn’t just fall out of the sky onto your idea. You need to work hard at it, understand the problem space and your competition, answer all sorts of difficult questions, build a name, clientele, reputation and brand and develop it into something that might become profitable (or might not) and whose profitability may suddenly change in either direction at any time depending on how accurately you are able to understand the constantly changing market conditions. And you need to be realistic about whether you think you can do this.

Having a dream isn’t wrong, but every business is difficult, and this one is already being run under by cheap Chinese prints.

It’s still possible, but all the success I hear now is from people who have designed their own product and are fulfilling specific needs, like adapters for certain tools and such.

Etsy also just banned 3d prints of other people’s design, so it’s even harder to make money with those now.

You can still make money with your own designs on Etsy, and direct to people who need things, but now it’s as much about the design of the items as the printing of them.

I suppose selling at a local market can still work, too, but it’s a huge time sink. (Like any other job, I guess.)

I do it as a side hustle. Not super busy but like friends wanting something and charging a little for it. Or light repair work, replacement brackets or custom stuff for people

They are so cheap that many people have them, or many services to provide prints. If you can find a specific market there are much higher end printers that offer industry solutions. Like Markforged can print continuous carbon fiber in the resin for parts that are same strength as aluminum, or print metals. Formlabs has dozens or resins and elastomers. Thingverse has a lot of parts ready to print. There are some free CAD solutions if you want to model parts from scratch. OpenCAD, FreeCAD, Blender