Before my iPhone had immediate access to any song I wanted thanks to the iTunes store and my Apple Music subscription, before the iPod allowed me to turn my own CDs into portable music, there was Napster and my shiny new iRiver MP3 player. Finding and downloading music, ensuring it was a quality file (and actually the music I was expecting it to be), and getting it transferred to my device was a huge, massive pain in the ass. But I could see through the cracks in the clusterfuckery juuuuust enough to know that something cool was going to happen. For years before the iPhone and Apple Music, I kept saying to myself “one day this is going to be so damn easy I won’t ever have to stop and think about it, it’ll all just be there when I’m ready to listen”.

We’re seeing through the cracks with 3D printing right now. It’s still a huge clusterfuck of a pain in the ass to find the files we want to print (if you, like me, are not talented enough or have enough time to create your own models and STLs files). Files are scattered across scores of aggregation sites and/or marketplace sites or sequestered off into standalone sites from artists running it themselves. Search functions are marginal on a good day, horrid most days. Many files are just pure crap. But I can see a day when you just decide you want to print something for a model or a diorama and 5 minutes later it’s on your computer ready to be printed.

Every day that passes we see more STLs for download and for sale. Great stuff, whether a 1/35 picture frame or a full German Panzer in 1/48 scale or tiny bolt heads scalable to any scale. More and more 3D artists are seeing value in making models they can sell in the various marketplaces. More and more small businesses are popping up with 3D printed creations they’re selling in physical form. And more and more 3D modelers are creating amazing sites and Patreons that allow subscribers to download tons of models each month for very little money.

The digital stash

It’s well known that we modelers love to collect kits, figures, decals, aftermarket add-ons, and anything else to fluff out the stash. There’s many reasons for constant stash growth, but a huge part of it is the “creation of the mind”. Buying an Opel Blitz and an aftermarket conversion to transform it into an airfield tanker is building a project in our heads. It’s why selling off our stash kits is such a sad moment. We’re not cutting down kits, we’re giving up on projects we dream of creating.

(For more on this topic, check out Episode 99 of the Plastic Model Mojo podcast)

There’s change coming to all of our modeling lives. Sooner than later, many (if not most) of us will have really high quality, really inexpensive 3D printers in our homes. Which means we’ll need STL files print. And we’ll start collecting them. I”m already collecting them. Why not? Most are cheap, effectively free to store, and better to grab when we can rather than risk not being able to buy it down the road.

Our physical stashes will continue to house full kits, significant aftermarket sets, and highly detailed figures, but our digital stashes are going to not only compete for many of those spots as 3D printed kits become increasingly realistic but will also grow the “small stuff”. Picture frames, foot stools, ketchup bottles, crossing gates, and all the other pieces of real life that we modelers so often have a hard time finding. My favorite purchase at IPMS Nationals 2023 was the Liang manhole covers and sewer grates. They’re beautifully printed and incredibly necessary to make an accurate diorama.

But unfortunately, Liang only sells the products, not the files. Which means that when I run out, I’ll need to buy more physical product, which has the potential to be printed with various levels of quality. This is a race that will be hard to maintain, not only for the equipment but because competition will get more and more fierce. History shows us that as any market gets more successful, competitors appear.

So how will small creators who produce physical 3D products keep up when printers continue to increase in quality and files become more plentiful?

The STL creator economy

The future in 3D printing simply does not lie in parts/models being printed, boxed, and shipped. Sure, there’ll always be a small contingent of cottage industry producers who crank out printed parts. The value here will be in being able to create brilliant prints of hard to print parts. It’ll be in the art not the production. Finding ways to blend resins to make really great prints. Or being able to print both colored and clear resins. Or being able to find just the right way to support tiny parts or complex parts.

But realistically, the production in the hobby is going to be focused in two areas:

  • Larger companies producing injection molded plastic
  • A Creator Community producing a wide range of STLs

This is where the money will come from. 3D printing run of the mill parts/models is a losing chase. From hardware costs to keep current to the production overhead to the fact that customer service issues on print problems is just replicating the problems of so many traditional resin part makers of the past. We’ve already learned the lesson.

So why are the 3D printers not embracing those lessons?

Someone is going to steal my designs!

For years, the recording industry fought tooth and nail against digital music distribution. They begrudgingly went into digital music kicking and screaming. And then one day they realized they were making a ton of money. People were still pirating, but when legitimate purchasing was easier than finding and downloading files of questionable quality, when their device was easily connected to search and organization tools, people started buying digital music like mad. And we saw the death of physical music distribution. Sure, physical distribution still exists. People are buying albums because… reasons. But it’s a niche market not a mass market.

Let’s get this out of the way clearly: people are going to steal your designs. They are doing it with your physical products, but they’re REALLY going to do it with your digital ones. At least until some sort of robust encryption comes along for STLs (or some new file format) it’s going to be relatively easy.

So what?

Here’s the thing: people who are buying pirated copies of your digital files aren’t going to spend money on your stuff legally anyway. But wait, what if they pirate your files and print 10000 copies and resell them? Again, the people buying those copies are highly unlikely to actively been choosing between your legal copy and the pirated copy.

My real question to you is what every company/brand asks themselves every day: How can I build a brand based on quality and desire that makes people want to seek me out?

Small businesses too often get caught in the trap of thinking the parts are the most valuable offering they have to give customers. It’s not. It’s experience.

If I send you feedback, small business, integrate it, appreciate it. Answer my questions when I ask. Understand my needs as a product user. Here’s a modeling example:

I recently bought a 3D printed tracked vehicle. It’s super cute and the tracks are printed as one big road wheels + links piece. Very nice. But the challenge for modelers, especially anyone who wants to enter such a thing in an IPMS contest, is mounting the tracks straight and parallel with each other. It’s a fiddly, smalllllll kit and getting them right is going to be tough. The kit maker has the chance to create a really great build experience by providing a simple, nearly free to print gluing guide/jig. This is experience. And when a customer reaches out and says “hey, I’m having trouble getting these things straight”, 3D on demand printing allows you to immediately improve the product. Experience matters more than anything.

Also… who cares? The question isn’t weather you’re going to get pirated or even just copied. You will. Everyone does. Even patent and trademark protections only take you so far. The questions isn’t whether you will, but whether you care. If you’re making enough money to cover your costs and grow your business and the pirating/copying isn’t fundamentally harming your growth, why do you care? I have to guess ego. And that’s a dumb business approach.

The power of impulse purchasing

My digital stash has grown leaps and bounds since I started it a few years back. It’s just too damn easy to spend money; it’s impulse purchasing at its finest. It’s too easy to download when I have subscriptions to folks cranking out complex designs week after week. I’ll buy something at midnight that I wouldn’t buy if I had to wait weeks to get it.

There’s so many things to create (and sell)

If you’ve ever built a plastic model truck or car of just about any era, you’ll know the pain of having to scrape off seam lines on leaf springs. I’ve spent so many hours doing that it really makes me question my love of building military trucks and cars. Who wants to open a shop selling them? Imagine how fast you could create an entire inventory of leaf spring designs for just about every kit out there. Modeling time is minimal, easily repeated and slightly tweaked model to model, and easy to sell at incredible margins.

“There’s money in them thar hills!”

I’m absolutely convinced there’s a decent amount of money to be made in selling STLs with vastly more money to be made as time goes on. Even if you’re selling the exact same thing in both printed and digital format, not selling digital files is pissing away a solid revenue stream. Here’s a sketch of a business plan:

  • Sell printed, physical products individually. This would need to include packaging, quality assurance, and shipping.
  • Sell digital STL files. This would require a web front end for the purchasing.
    • Digital files can be sold in a subscription model (like so many of the Patreons are currently doing)
    • Digital files can be sold individually, at or slightly below the physical product with a vastly higher margin
  • Sell bundles of printed products + the digital print files for it for a higher price. This would allow you to increase the overall margin for each product.
  • Sell limited production runs. Produce a fixed amount physically and then sell the STLs after that. (Thanks to John Binford who posted about this on Facebook after I posted this blog post)
  • Charge for commercial usage so people can download, print, and resell your STLs commercially. (Many of the Patreon 3D modelers do this)

One or all of those options have legs. And if you create a fantastic buying/building experience, you’re not losing anything even if Chinese pirates were selling kits all over Alibaba. Gone are the days when we can lock down our products without fear of replication. But at least this way you are giving real customers multiple options to make money from your hard work.

Don’t believe me? As my buddy Matt McDougall pointed out, Lord of the Print has a Patreon at $10/month… with 7800 monthly subscribers. Yeah, that’s $78,000 a month. EVERY MONTH. Month after month. That’s $936,000 a year. Nearly a million dollars in revenue a year…with almost zero overhead other than labor costs and minimal 3D modeling computer equipment. Show me a single garage-based 3D modeling shop making that kind of money at that margin and I’ll eat my hat.

You can dismiss this all you want as “not the historical modeling realm, it’s the fantasy stuff”, but you’d be radically missing the point. Tankbrusher, who makes tracks for 1/35 scale tanks has 74 subscribers at $10/month. That’s $740/month. And he’s a niche of a niche who’s just started up and is still building inventory and awareness.

To all the 3D printing model makers

It’s your brain and your research and your labor that sets you apart, not your production capabilities. The printing process is a fool’s errand in the long run. I can’t see a long term future in selling the 3D prints themselves unless they are perfect. I mean stunningly perfect. My Phrozen 8K printer is amazing. Is yours better than that?  And will it stay better when the future Phrozen 22k resolution comes out? Are you making enough money to actually… make money? Or are you spending so much on production costs, equipment, etc. that your margins are shit? Don’t look at your product as your child. Look at it as your workforce. You’re not giving birth to it, you’re not creating a relationship with it. You’re training it. It’s not art, it’s stock.

You know what you should really be worried about? The speed at which the world is producing talented 3D modelers. Kids who’ve grown up on technology and 3D rendering tools that are so vastly better with this stuff than you are. They don’t need to steal your files… they will just recreate the model in near perfect detail, even if they don’t have a source model or file to work from.

But why give them incentive? If you are already selling something people love and are buying, the value to them in pirating you drops significantly. Not to zero… it won’t ever be to zero. That’s the world now. But create a great product with a great experience and you’ll make the money you want and deserve to make.

This isn’t unprecedented. There are a ton of 3D artists that are churning out models every month for $10/month on Patreon. And making so damn much more money than you are by physically printing these files, putting them in a box, and shipping them out.

Stop worrying so damn much about protecting yourself and start focusing on how to make more money. Your brain is your power. Your attention to detail, your research, your responsiveness are your powers.