Back in April of 2021 I had just got a 3D printer and was getting bored printing other people's designs.
I decided to learn CAD myself, fusion 360, it was quite a steep learning curve at first!
The first thing I made was version 1 of this joint and lighter case for kayaking. The top of the case looked like a frog face so I called it the FrogCase 🐸. I posted about it on Reddit at the time just to show it off and a bunch of people wanted the model and wanted me to print it for them.
So a business was accidentally born 😂 I started writing down people's info in a spreadsheet but then eventually gave in and made a Shopify store.
The beauty of 3D printing is that you are not stuck making one product forever. The sales slowed down after a couple years, but the phone cases I made started picking up!
Don't get me wrong the most I ever made in a month was $1,000 (average is $300). I'm definitely not getting rich off this but it's letting me save a tiny bit in this wild cost of living area. And it's fun to make new products!
Some of my products were born from suggestions from people who do not have the time or know-how. I love being able to bring something from an idea to a thing you can hold and that functions well. It really builds a sense of self-efficacy that I needed.
If you are at all interested in creating your own designs from scratch I suggest you start today! Start small, just watch some videos and lurk in different CAD subs, eventually it will start making sense. Before long you will be able to go from idea to prototype in your hands in an hour. It feels like magic.
I have completely ditched Reddit so I will be here now solely! Please let me know if I post too much lol
If anyone wants the Frog Case files, or the king size version, just let me know and I'll send you each a one-time link. I just don't want to have it permanently hosted online just in case.
Welcome! I remember this design popping up on reddit. It's nice to hear that you were able to make some side money off it and pivot into other things to keep the income stream going.
TBH, I wouldn't hesitate to post. Lemmy in general is pretty quiet. I chalk that up to a combination of a fairly small user base and having a ton of communities out of the gate - probably too many for the size of the user base. As is usual, there are plenty of lurkers and if you post content they find interesting they'll come out of the woodwork to comment and upvote. I've managed to find a few communities that match some of my interests and do my best to contribute content, although 3D printing is a bit harder because it takes more effort for me to make what I consider meaningful content. I have considered lowering my standards to see if generates some activity though.
Overall, the vibe here feels a bit like the earlier days of reddit. Lots of techies with a handful of normies thrown in. Since Lemmy is FOSS, the user base does lean more toward the FOSS side of things than reddit, which is somewhat nice in that I'm thinking about FOSS a ton more than I was a year ago.
Foss is a lifestyle to me :) slowly cutting out everything proprietary I love that side of the community
I'm definitely going to make high effort posts here moving forward. I hope to spark more people to join in, snowball effect!
I'll happily comment! Hopefully that will spark some others. If/when I make something interesting or mess around with my printer I'll be sure to post it here. Meanwhile, !beebutts@lemmy.world and a few other gardening and photography related communities are right up my alley.