A 3D printing business plan has two clocks to plan: the printers' hours and yours. Printers are cheap and run unattended, so a print that takes ten hours of machine time and ten minutes of yours can be the best sale in the shop, and a print that takes an hour of design can be the worst unless the design is charged for. The plan has to show which products pay for your minutes, how many printers the volume needs, and what the filament and failed prints cost. In the example below, a print shop in Idaho sells planters, keychains, articulated dragons and custom parts at markets and online, and ends its first year about $19,300 ahead on $54,400 of sales, with its own hours paid in the costs. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the first year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.
The short version
- Describe the shop in a paragraph: the printers, what it prints, who buys, the goals.
- Cost a print: filament, the printer's hours, failed prints, your minutes, packaging, selling fees.
- Count printer hours and your hours separately; your hours run out first.
- Prints that run long and need little finishing pay best for each of your hours.
- Charge design time on custom work, and say so in the quote.
- TaroStack keeps filament counted by color and costs every print from what it used. More below.
Part 1: the business description
Snake River Print Lab, a made-up 3D print shop in Boise, Idaho, I use in these examples, writes:
Snake River Print Lab prints its own designs, planters, articulated dragons and keychains, on a farm of five printers, sold at Boise markets and online, and designs and prints custom parts for local businesses.
Part 2: what each print costs
A $600 printer that lasts about 3,000 hours, with nozzles, belts, build plates and power, costs about 32 cents an hour. The plan counts one print in ten failing, and adds that share to the filament and printer time.
| Per unit | Planter | Keychain, 20 to a plate | Articulated dragon | Custom part |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Filament, PLA at $20 a kilo | $2.40 (120 g) | $0.16 | $3.00 (150 g) | $0.90 |
| Printer time, at $0.318 an hour | $1.91 (6 h) | $0.06 | $3.18 (10 h) | $0.95 (3 h) |
| Failed prints, 10% | $0.43 | $0.02 | $0.62 | $0.19 |
| Your hands-on time, at $20 an hour | $5.00 (15 min) | $0.67 (2 min) | $3.33 (10 min) | $6.67 (20 min) |
| Design time, 1.5 hours at $35 | $52.50 | |||
| Packaging | $0.80 | $0.20 | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| Selling fees: 8% online and at markets, 3% on invoices | $1.80 | $0.20 | $2.40 | $3.95 |
| Variable cost | $12.34 | $1.31 | $13.03 | $65.66 |
The filament is the smallest part of most of these. The hands-on time, slicing, starting, removing, cleaning supports and packing, is the biggest for the planter, and design time is 80% of the custom part. How each was priced is in how to price handmade items, and how a failure rate turns into a cost is in scrap rate formula.
Part 3: customers and prices
| Product | Price | Variable cost | Contribution | Margin | A month at full speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planter, 120 g PLA | $22.50 | $12.34 | $10.16 | 45.2% | 120 |
| Keychain, printed 20 to a plate | $2.50 | $1.31 | $1.19 | 47.6% | 600 |
| Articulated dragon, 18 in | $30.00 | $13.03 | $16.97 | 56.6% | 100 |
| Custom part, designed to order | $131.50 | $65.66 | $65.84 | 50.1% | 6 |
At full speed the dragons bring the most, about $1,700 of the month's $4,000 of contribution, from about 17 of your hours: roughly $100 for each hour of yours, because the printer does ten hours of the work. The planters bring about $40 for each of your hours and the keychains about $36. The custom parts pay for their design time at $35 an hour and leave $66 each on top, but there are only so many. The plan leans on the products the printer makes while you do something else.
Part 4: how many printers
At full speed the month's prints take about 1,850 printer hours: 720 for planters, 1,000 for dragons, about 110 for keychains and 18 for custom parts, plus about 10% again for the failures. Five printers running around the clock have about 3,600 hours a month, so the farm is a little over half busy, which leaves room for a holiday rush and for a printer that's down for a new nozzle. Your hands-on hours, about 78 a month at full speed, run out long before the printers do. How to work out what a set of machines and a person can make in a week is in how to calculate production capacity.
Part 5: the first year, month by month
Fixed costs are $675 a month: workshop space ($300), insurance ($40), the website ($40), market fees ($150), marketing ($80), design and slicer software ($30), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it in month 11:
| Month | Planters | Keychains | Dragons | Custom parts | Sales | Profit | Cash, year to date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 18 | 90 | 15 | 1 | $1,212 | −$65 | −$65 |
| 2 | 24 | 120 | 20 | 1 | $1,572 | $117 | $52 |
| 3 | 30 | 150 | 25 | 2 | $2,063 | $364 | $416 |
| 4 | 36 | 180 | 30 | 2 | $2,423 | $546 | $962 |
| 5 | 48 | 240 | 40 | 2 | $3,143 | $909 | $1,871 |
| 6 | 60 | 300 | 50 | 3 | $3,994 | $1,338 | $3,209 |
| 7 | 72 | 360 | 60 | 4 | $4,846 | $1,766 | $4,975 |
| 8 | 84 | 420 | 70 | 4 | $5,566 | $2,130 | $7,105 |
| 9 | 96 | 480 | 80 | 5 | $6,418 | $2,558 | $9,663 |
| 10 | 108 | 540 | 90 | 5 | $7,138 | $2,921 | $12,584 |
| 11 | 120 | 600 | 100 | 6 | $7,989 | $3,350 | $15,935 |
| 12 | 120 | 600 | 100 | 6 | $7,989 | $3,350 | $19,285 |
The year's sales are $54,352 and the profit $19,285, on top of $20 an hour for your hands-on time and $35 for design, which are in the variable costs. The printers' wear is in the 32 cents an hour too, so the profit is after it. How the year's fixed costs come back, sale by sale, is in contribution margin example.
Part 6: the startup budget
| Item | Example |
|---|---|
| Five printers | $3,000 |
| Filament dryer, spare nozzles and build plates | $300 |
| Shelving and enclosures | $400 |
| First filament, 20 kg | $400 |
| Calipers and design tools | $100 |
| Market tent and table | $600 |
| Website and photos | $500 |
| Working cash | $2,000 |
| Total to start | $7,300 |
Printing in a room people live in calls for ventilation, and some filaments call for more than PLA does; follow the printer and filament makers' guidance. At $19,300 a year, the $5,300 spent before working cash is earned back within the first year.
Get the template
Download the 3D printing business plan workbook. Four sheets: your prints with price, variable cost and a month's volume at full speed; the first year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Filament in 15 colors, a dragon in each of them, five printers running all week, a market on Saturday that needs 40 dragons and 200 keychains, and custom quotes waiting. A notebook can't say how much of the teal is left on the shelf and on the spools, how many dragons are ready for Saturday, or what a planter costs now that filament went up.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps filament counted by color and costs every print from what it used.
Filament as stock. Each color is an item, bought by the spool and used by the gram; TaroStack does the unit math, and filament comes up on a reorder list in days of cover, before the teal runs out.
Prints as recipes. A dragon is a recipe of 150 grams of filament and its packaging, so a day of prints takes the filament off stock at what it cost, with the good prints, the failed ones and the minutes recorded on the batch.
Market stock. Finished prints are counted by design and color on a phone, so the dragons for Saturday are a number, and the price creep report shows when a supplier's filament went up.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Teal filament left | Weigh the spools | Stock by color, in grams |
| Dragons ready for Saturday | Count the boxes | Stock by design and color |
| Failed prints this month | A tally on the wall | Rejects on every batch |
| What a planter costs now | Last spool's price | Each batch, at what it used |
Counting, recipes and batches are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.