From One 3D Printer to More Than 100
I’m JT McCord. In 2024, I started with one 3D printer. Today, we operate more than 100 machines, have generated more than $1 million in 3D printing sales, and sell products across virtually every major ecommerce platform.
GoodPrints3D is where I share what we have learned while turning 3D printing from an experiment into a real manufacturing and ecommerce business.
There Was Never a Master Plan for 100 Printers
In 2024, this started with one machine.
Not a warehouse. Not a production team. Not a carefully designed manufacturing operation with sophisticated software running behind it.
One printer.
What started as experimenting with 3D printing quickly became selling products. Then it became learning ecommerce. Then solving production problems. Then adding another printer.
And another.
Eventually, the question stopped being, “What can we print?”
It became, “How do you reliably manufacture hundreds of products, across dozens of machines, every single day?”
Adding printers is easy. Building an operation capable of using those printers efficiently is much harder.
That challenge became one of the most interesting parts of the entire business.
100+ Printers Changes How You Think About 3D Printing
When you own one printer, a failed print is annoying.
When you operate more than 100 machines, a small problem repeated across the fleet can mean hundreds of failed parts, hours of lost production, delayed shipments, unnecessary labor, and thousands of dollars in lost capacity.
That changes what matters.
Reliability
A fast printer is useful. A printer that works consistently every day is far more valuable.
Repeatability
A setting that works once is interesting. A process that works thousands of times is useful.
Throughput
Machines become manufacturing capacity. We think in parts per day, jobs per machine, and production hours.
Systems
Scheduling, quality control, inventory, assembly, packaging, maintenance, and fulfillment all become part of 3D printing.
From Experiment to Manufacturing Operation
One Printer
We started experimenting with 3D printing, designing products, learning materials, and figuring out whether people would actually buy what we made.
Products Became a Business
Sales began growing across ecommerce marketplaces. More demand meant more machines, better workflows, more products, and a much deeper understanding of what production actually requires.
Dozens of Machines Became a Print Farm
The focus shifted from individual printers to production systems, capacity planning, quality control, fulfillment, staffing, inventory, and automation.
100+ Printers and More Than $1 Million in Sales
Today, our businesses manufacture and sell 3D printed products through our own brands, major ecommerce marketplaces, wholesale channels, and commercial production relationships.
We Learned 3D Printing While Selling Real Products
One of the biggest advantages we have is that we did not learn 3D printing in a vacuum.
We learned it while trying to make products customers would actually buy.
Across our businesses and brands, we have sold through virtually every major ecommerce channel available to us.
Every channel teaches you something different.
Etsy teaches you how search demand interacts with niche products. Amazon demands operational discipline and consistency.
When you operate your own Shopify brands, you become responsible for creating the demand yourself through marketing, advertising, SEO, branding, conversion optimization, and customer retention.
Commercial production introduces another world entirely: tolerances, materials, lead times, capacity, quality control, packaging requirements, repeatability, and production scheduling.
Those experiences shape the way I think about 3D printing today.
More Than $1 Million in 3D Printing Sales
Revenue is not the only measurement that matters, but crossing $1 million in 3D printing sales taught us something extremely important.
There is a huge difference between making something that can be 3D printed and building something that can be produced, sold, fulfilled, and supported profitably.
We've had products work incredibly well.
We've had products go nowhere.
We've bought equipment that became essential to our operation, and we've tested things that didn't live up to expectations.
We've experimented with materials, machines, print settings, workflows, packaging, marketplaces, advertising, fulfillment, software, and manufacturing systems.
Because we manufacture products every day, we get something that is incredibly valuable in 3D printing:
Repetition. Lots and lots of repetition.
A setting that produces one successful print can be useful.
A process that produces thousands of successful prints tells you something entirely different.
The Farm Became a Software and Operations Problem Too
At our scale, printers stop feeling like individual machines.
They become manufacturing capacity.
We think about how many parts a machine can produce per day, how jobs move through the farm, where bottlenecks develop, how failures are handled, how finished parts move into assembly, and how orders eventually reach customers.
My background in software became incredibly useful as the operation grew.
We have built and adapted systems around:
- Production tracking
- Print job routing
- Quoting
- Inventory
- Employee workflows
- Time tracking
- Assembly
- Quality control
- Shipping and fulfillment
Some of those tools exist because doing something manually may be perfectly reasonable with five printers and completely ridiculous with 100.
I Wanted to Build Something Better Than Another Generic 3D Printing Blog
There is an enormous amount of information about 3D printing online.
Some of it is excellent.
Some of it comes from someone spending a weekend with a new printer. Some repeats the same advice that has circulated through forums and blogs for years.
Increasingly, a lot of it is simply rewritten from something else.
I want GoodPrints3D to be different.
This site exists to document what we have learned from actually operating printers, manufacturing products, building ecommerce businesses, and solving the same production problems over and over again.
That includes topics like:
- Why prints fail
- Which materials actually make sense for different applications
- What print settings matter most
- Which equipment holds up to heavy use
- How to price 3D printed products
- How to operate a print farm
- How to scale production
- How to handle quality control
- How to organize assembly and fulfillment
- How to choose between printers
- How to sell 3D printed products online
- How to make 3D printing economically sustainable as a business
Sometimes the answer here will be different from the answer you would get from someone operating one printer at home.
That's intentional.
We're usually looking at the problem through the lens of repeatability, production, and what actually happens when you depend on these machines every day.
Our Laboratory Has More Than 100 Printers in It
100+ Printers
Real production equipment operating every day, not a handful of machines used only for reviews.
$1M+ in Sales
Lessons learned while turning printed parts into products customers actually purchase.
Multiple Brands
Experience building, marketing, producing, and fulfilling products across different audiences and categories.
Commercial Production
Experience thinking about capacity, repeatability, timelines, tolerances, quality control, packaging, and scale.
Real employees. Real deadlines. Real customers. Real failures. Real products. Real money on the line.
That environment produces lessons that are difficult to recreate with a few test prints.
When something works, I want to explain why.
When something fails, I want to show what happened.
When conventional 3D printing advice does not make sense at production scale, I want to talk about that too.
And when we don't know the answer yet, I'd rather test it than pretend we do.
Digital Manufacturing Became a Real Local Business
JC Print Farm and GoodPrints3D are based in Ohio.
What began with a single machine has grown into a manufacturing operation employing people, building products, serving customers, and shipping 3D printed parts across the country and beyond.
One of the ideas that fascinates me most is what happens as manufacturing becomes increasingly digital and distributed.
A product does not always need a massive factory, expensive tooling, or tens of thousands of units to become economically viable.
Sometimes it needs a good design, capable equipment, good software, and a system that can reliably turn a digital file into a finished physical product.
We've watched that transformation happen firsthand.
Now we're building around it.
I Don't Think We've Reached the Most Interesting Part Yet
We're still expanding the print farm.
We're still building more automation into our operation.
We're still launching products and brands.
We're still testing machines and materials.
We're still writing software.
We're still looking for ways to make production faster, simpler, more reliable, and more scalable.
And we're continuing to explore what happens when a technology traditionally associated with hobbyists becomes a legitimate manufacturing platform.
GoodPrints3D will grow alongside that journey.
We Started With One Printer in 2024.
Today there are more than 100.
My goal with GoodPrints3D is to build one of the most useful resources anywhere for people who want to understand not only how to 3D print, but what happens when you actually depend on 3D printing.
Whether you're buying your first printer, fixing a failed print, selling your first product, building a print farm, or trying to manufacture thousands of parts, I hope something we've learned makes your path a little easier.
JT McCord
Founder, GoodPrints3D & JC Print Farm