Thinking of building a 3D printing side hustle with the Heygear G1X
So I have owned a 3d printer in the past and enjoyed it but didn't have much to do with it.
Now, having recently moved, I've got extra bedrooms and a workshop to boot. The G1X is extremely appealing to me as a side hustle, but turning this into profit is obviously easier said than done. I'm looking at ink costs and time to print, and it seems like it could be a decent side hustle, especially with not having to paint/color stuff I'm printing. My deadline is 3x days to decide if this is worth the time or not.
I'm trying to figure out what area of the market to tap into, I was mostly thinking for color 3D models for board games or personal use, real estate models, or going for UV printing high-end customized company gifts or textured photos of peoples petc, etc. The UV printing seems pretty cool for textured items, but I do worry that by offering too many services (hey, here's 50 different things to print on!) it could complicate things.
How well does self promotion at gaming, comic cons, etc work? Was thinking about maybe hitting some craft markets and showing off UV printing for peoples pets, locational maps, etc.
Does 3d printing or UV printing have better profit based upon time needed and ink costs? Also, when quoting pricing for a 3D print, does the amount of time needed scale up the cost? Does a longer print cost more because it takes longer and it's more profit efficient to print lots of smaller models?
Any advice would be appreciated. I'm not looking to turn this into a full time business, but a nice hustle would be great with a few prints a week. I'm working on my site www.dreambuildmake.com that will let users conceptualize and create 3d models on the site, or upload as well, but I do think I need to target an audience and stick with it.
Sorry if this is the wrong place for this, I've got 3x days left to make my Kickstarter payment and really start stepping down this path, so not a lot of time left to make this choice.
Posted Sep 14, 2026, 7:58 PM UTC