Selling 3D printed products without buying a printer

A desktop printer is paid for once, but then it is paid for every day. You need a ventilated space, spools stored dry, a nozzle replaced regularly, a clean build plate, up-to-date firmware. Every new product needs a tuning phase before a presentable part comes out.

Then there is the failure rate. A first layer that lifts, damp filament, a power cut: the part goes in the trash and the machine time is lost. On a single order it does not matter, on twenty orders it is your week.

The most expensive item is still the time spent: starting prints, monitoring, deburring, packing, dropping off at the pickup point. Nobody pays you for that time, and it comes out of your selling time.

The model is simple: you keep the sales and the customer relationship, a workshop keeps the machines. You send a 3D file, the workshop prints, inspects and ships. Nothing is produced before a customer has paid, so nothing is stored.

At Bobitech Cloud3D, we print from an STL or OBJ file, in millimeters, up to 50 MB. There is no minimum order: one part is a valid order. The full flow is described in the article on on-demand printing.

This removes the question that stalls most launches: how many to order to get started. The answer becomes one part, then ten when sales follow.

The production price fits in two lines: €0.50 setup per part, then material based on the actual volume of the part. Allow €0.033/cm³ in PLA, €0.038/cm³ in PETG and €0.040/cm³ in ABS. No handling fee, no subscription.

Quantity discounts apply: -3% from 10 parts, -6% from 50, -10% from 200. They reward batches without forcing you to order them in advance.

To price your own part before opening an account, the pricing page breaks down the rate card line by line. The calculation is explained in detail in how the price of a part is calculated.

This is the main offer, and it is what changes your whole organization. The workshop ships directly to the end customer for €7.90, in an unbranded package under your shop's name. Tracking is sent back to the shop so you can answer the customer.

If you would rather receive the parts to inspect them, personalize them or add a note, shipping to the seller costs €6.90. Both options coexist and are chosen order by order.

In both cases, nothing tells the customer that a third party made the part. It is your brand on the package, your name on the shipping label.

Standard is 7 business days, express is 3 business days with a 30% surcharge. These lead times cover production; shipping time comes on top.

Show an honest lead time on the product page rather than an optimistic one. A customer who receives the order on time does not leave a negative review, a customer who waits three days longer than expected does.

Express is mainly for busy periods. On a product sold at €39.90, a 30% surcharge on €10 of production can still be absorbed if you decide to offer it.

There are two paths. The first: start from a catalog that is already modeled and tested. The ready to sell page gathers products whose files are validated, which skips the design phase.

The second: create your own model. The AI 3D generation tool produces a file from a description. It is the only part of the site that works with credits: one credit per generation, 10 generations for €7 or 50 for €29.

If you already have a file, check its geometry before ordering: closed mesh, units in millimeters, one part per file.

An assembled object is ordered as several parts: one STL file per part. A lamp in two parts is therefore two files, each priced on its own volume.

If the product needs assembly (bulb, socket, screws), you specify it in the production note. The workshop confirms the price before starting production, so you are never committed to an amount you have not seen.

This approach lets you sell objects that could never come out of a single print, and adjust just one part when you update the product.

Bobitech Cloud3D is a service of Bobitech, a plastics manufacturer of about 150 people based in the Plastics Vallée, in Oyonnax, France. Production and inspection are carried out in France.

The pricing strategy is deliberate: the price stays close to cost, the margin comes from the volume produced. You pay for production, not for a middleman marketplace.

When volumes become large, printing is no longer the most economical process: Bobitech then offers plastic injection molding. To see the production flow in detail, go to the production page.