Some of the designs I buy at various 3D sites and some I make myself.
Check out my IG @bjorntactical - I have a few videos of the X-carve doing some holster work.
It all depends on what youâre selling. You kind of have to base your projects on who youâre selling to and how much you can get for them. You canât charge $500 for any random item just because it took you 10 hours to make.
I make all kinds of projects but my biggest sellers have been wedding cake toppers, childrens name puzzles and most recently cribbage boards. I currently have an order of 30 cribbage boards among other things. Starting a facebook group and most recently selling to facebook co-ops has resulted in a lot of sales
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I suspect thereâs a market segment of commercial users using it to speed up the prototyping process, not for creating things that are sold to end users. So itâs commercial use, and will eventually contribute to making money, but itâs not building a thing to be sold directly.
TomP
Iâve been trying to create a cribbage board⊠Iâve laid out all the holes, but I am struggling with getting perfect circles. Do you have any tips or tricks?
What size bit do you most often use?
Anything else you think I need to know.
I use vcarve to create the board code and drill the holes with the drill operation toolpaths. I started out using just a regular 1/8" drill bit, with good results, but changed to using either 2.5mm or 2.7mm pcb drilling bits. I bought them off Amazon. Pretty cheap and are pretty much just those size drill bits with a 1/8" shank.
Got my x carve up and running about a year ago. Would love to at least have the machine pay for itself at some point. I realized I have not touched my machine in almost 6 months. I guess I sort of gave up on making money with it.
No matter what I want to get back into the hobby and taking a serious look at trying to make some money with it again. the following is a short summery of the business I was able to do, and the a new situation that may produce a profit for me. any insight on what I may have been doing wrong (which I already see was a lot). Or how I may better approach it better in the future. Is greatly appreciated.
Started with making gifts. Then made small batch of those. trying to sell just word of mouth with some success. tried a criegs list add with no success.
Made a batch of QTY: 8 20"Dia. round signs. material cost me about $16. (just a 24" x 48" x 1" edge glued flat panel pine or aspen from Menardâs could get QTY: 2 out of one which was about $30.
Cut time about 5 hrs each. plus about 2 hrs each for painting sanding poly finishing etc⊠not to mention the hrs in v carve to get vectors just right and tool paths right. With a few prototypes to make cutting settings adjustments.
So I thought sale price $60ea. then quickly lowered that to $50ea. I only sold QTY:6 over about a 4 month period.
In that same time period I spent some time in v carve designing a few other signs and made a few prototypes. But reluctant to make âbatchesâ or inventory as I have seen the failure to get rid of what I have already spent countless hours making.
One other venture making a custom Haunted house logo sign and a few cheap props and other set signs for the haunted house made me about $200. but again with well over 20 hrs in vcarve. and well over 15 hrs actually making the stuff.
The customer was definitely happy with quality and product. I also made sure to be upfront about the cost and time line to complete job. All of that seemed to be a success and had good relationship with customer. Was told They would need much more, but then was told to hold off and that the budget was cut for such luxury items. I made sure that there was not a concern with product quality/design. Making clear that I would redo or make anything right in order to make sure they were satisfied at no additional charge.
I was assured that work was great and they loved the products. I have a suspicion that the person I was dealing with presented him self as having authority to buy and negotiate prices but then was quickly reigned in and someone (the big boss) put a stop to his spending and made the decision to not put money into what I was selling.
So after all of that. seeing how much time and effort I had put in. Neglecting my family and loosing my weekends working on all of this. I guess I sort of gave up on the idea and decided I canât put as much time into it as is required. I understand business takes a tremendous amount of time an effort to pull off.
Fast forward to now. I recently sold another $50 sign that was just hanging on my garage wall. just by accident to a friend of mine. Then this friend calls me later that week and says. I think I have some people that would buy that other stuff you have (the prototypes I just made one of and decided to just keep). Then he says he knows a guy who has a table at a lot of gun shows around here and thinks he wants to sit down and figure out a whole sale discount price and what I could do for him. This is what has gotten me to say I need to get my butt in gear and give it another try.
My fear is that people want $100 worth of quality and time/ effort for about $20. and for me who has a full time job and other things on my plate. Just seems like I canât make it worth my while or even produce a good qty for any real higher volume sales. Anyway sorry for writing a whole book on here. Guess I am just ranting and letting the world know my business screw ups. any advice would be great. Even it that advice is to stop crying about your first world problems. lol. thanks.
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Hey there, specifically what were you making to say it paid for itself?
I make cool things for myself and some to try and sell at my moms consignment shop but as others have said its the custom pieces that bring in the money. I have sold a few here and there from customers in my garage (I also install car audio video and remote starters) as well as at the consignment shop. Gifts for friends and family members are a great way to get potential customers when people ask where they got it. I stopped trying to mass produce pieces and make one at a time. Once you design it you can just make them as needed if you need more. Family signs with names are a great one people love those and again you only need to make the design once then change names as needed. I have not paid my machine off or the upgrades or the current round of upgrades I have started to push my machine harder but I have made a few hundred off my creations. This is currently more of a hobby that will hopefully become a business for me. Like you said between full time job and family its hard to justify spending every minute of free time making things. I have had my machine almost 3 years but only play with it in the summer time since my garage is not heated so lots of down time keeps me from trying to make a living off this as well.
So if you were describing (advertising) your cncâd work to sell, could you say it was âhand-craftedâ or just âcustomâ made. I have been making a few items to place in my sister-in-lawâs consignment shop and have been wondering how to describe it.
I like to call it custom made since its not so much âhandâ crafted lol. I have considered making a big sign with my contact info but currently just have some pieces there.
You want to sell it for pennies on the dollar yet?
I make a little side-money off of custom cake toppers, signs and some specialized aluminium carving.
Very limited time to carve so in a very small scale, yet I probably make 2k/year in revenue.
My marketing efforts are nearly zero.
Base line - find your market. Dont do what everyone else does, find and/or create your niché 
This is the hardest part.
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Hi Tom,
What kind of wood do you use for your toppers? Do you machine the pins that go into the cake in one go or do you put them on later?
Greetings,
Aaron
I use 1/8â Baltic birch and make them all one piece mostly.