Vic told me a rule he set for himself back when he was starting: the filament had to pay for itself or he didn't buy filament. Two rolls off Amazon was a stretch. So the business didn't really start as a plan. It started as the only way to keep printing.

That worked. It worked well enough that he ended up making a video about how 3D printing had killed his hobby — the thing he did for fun was now the thing he owed people. So he went and bought a resin printer that is not allowed to be content. No videos about it, no answers owed to anybody. First thing off the plate was a massive Darth Vader he'd been wanting to do for a while.

We went back through the whole path. His brother called and said he was going to spend his tax return on a 3D printer, and then didn't, and Vic did — an Ender 3 he had to assemble, which he hated, which he gave away to a friend. Resin after that, an Elegoo Mars 3, and custom D&D figures for people's campaigns. That Mars 3 is where 3D Prints by Vic actually started. There was a big filament printer in between that he calls the wrong choice, and then the Bambu Lab X1C, which has over ten thousand print hours on it and has never had a nozzle or a fan replaced.

The part I keep thinking about is what he's built around HueForge. A Learn tab with free tutorials and cheat sheets on it, a seven-episode masterclass, a filament database built specifically for transmission distance because the manufacturers don't test for it, and a margin calculator for the subscribers who sell their prints. His words for why he keeps building tools: if my designs aren't good enough for you to stick around, what can I make that is?

And he told a story about a show where two of his own Patreon subscribers had booths selling his designs. He walked in braced for it to be awkward. About halfway through the first day they were sending customers to each other, and all of them made more money.

Find Vic: 3DprintsbyVic.com · @3dprintsbyvic Come hang out: discord.gg/asylumlifemakes

Live life to the fullest. Grow in wisdom. Show what you've learned generously.