New Business – 3D Orcs Printing Company

Delayed Launch

Welcome back! We had hoped to announce our Etsy shop launch in today’s blog, but sadly we need to postpone it a bit. With luck it’ll only be a short delay.

Blocked Nozzles

Our 3D printer extruder nozzle became blocked, and then so did our back up nozzle, leaving us with no way to print anything. We’ve ordered more replacement nozzles which should arrive today, and equipment and supplies for nozzle cleaning which should arrive later this week, so we should be back up and running very soon. (Is the word “nozzle” starting to sound funny to you? It is to me!)

Themed Game Pieces

We do have the designs complete for our first two custom themed sets of game pieces! We’re very excited to launch our Etsy shop with them, but of course that only works if we can actually produce them. We’ll showcase them here as soon as they’re available, but since that’s not yet the case, we’ll avoid posting spoilers for now.

Photo Studio

Despite our new production delay, we’ve continued to get things set up in other areas. We had fun setting up our mini photo studio, for taking good quality photos of our products. We started with these instructions, and then modified them to suit our needs.

Here is our result!

Business Progress

We’ve also gone ahead with setting up the business side of things. We already had our business properly registered as “3D Orcs Printing Company, LLC”. This week we opened our company bank account, set up our bookkeeping records, and acquired packaging to fulfill orders.

On Your Mark, Get Set, …

We’ve now got everything ready to launch our business! Except, of course, the ability to actually produce anything. But that should be resolved today, and by next week’s blog we really should be ready to announce our launch!

Welcome!

Hi there! Welcome to our journey into the world of 3D printing!

For a while now, my wife Lois and I (hi, I’m Kevin!) have been talking about starting our own business. We’ve had lots of ideas (we’re both very creative people), but none of them really materialized. Until now.

Lois was browsing the internet one day and excitedly called me over to look at something. She had stumbled across some really amazing 3D prints. When I saw them I was blown away!

Then I started thinking – that feeling I had when I saw them, that’s the feeling I want people to have when they interact with our business. Amazement, wonder, and “I want that!” Could we do that with 3D printing?

Besides being creative, we also both have technical backgrounds. It seemed like a good fit. But creating a business takes a lot more than desire and aptitude.

Research and Decisions

There’s so much to learn! Both about 3D printing, and about running a business. We dove into the research, taking notes, making lists, creating spreadsheets. (We both love our spreadsheets!)

We finally decided on the Anet ET5X 3D printer . It seemed like a good balance between cost, features, and ease of use. With a click of a button, it was ordered, and we were on our way!

While waiting for it to arrive, we looked into all the requirements for starting and running a business. We’ll be selling on Etsy, and operating as “3D Orcs Printing Company, LLC”. Yes, we’re aware that it makes the URL for our blog site look like “3 dorcs”. That pun was kind of the point.

We also needed to decide where to focus our business. There are so many things you can 3D print! But after considering a lot (and I mean A LOT) of options, we kept coming back to games. We’re both avid gamers (one day I’ll tell you about our wedding – trust me, it’s connected), and so we’ll start with board game accessories.

Arrival!

Our printer arrived yesterday!

Our first glimpse was very exciting!

But we soon discovered why the manufacturer uses the term “DIY”. It came partially assembled and we needed to finish putting it together.

The instruction sheet that came with it would probably have been fine for someone who has worked with other 3D printers, but it left many questions for us noobs. YouTube to the rescue! Videos for the ET5 (by YouTuber “Find Discount Price”) and the ET5 Pro (by “Mr. NVC Restoration”) were both close enough to our ET5X that they were immensely helpful. Thanks!

Our 3D printer is ready to go!

Now we need to play with it and learn what it can really do. Come back next Monday for a look at our first experiences with our new tech toy!

Tag: New Business

Another Bump in the Road