If you’ve had to explain your love of 3D printing to your friends who don’t quite get it, here’s another hobby that has a unique appeal: piecing together random and odd 3D printed parts to create something new.
Akin to scrapbooking or collage, “kitbashing” 3D printed parts is a growing trend, and these enthusiasts are willing to buy your extra model prints and failed parts.
Kitbashing is a term originating from hobby modeling, particularly in the context of creating custom models, miniatures, or props, from the leftover or unused parts from various model kits.
Enthusiasts often modify or customize these components in kitbashing to fit their desired design or aesthetic. The hobby allows for a high degree of creativity and flexibility since it doesn’t rely solely on pre-designed parts or kits.
Instead of, or in addition to, buying model kits, boxes of 3D printed castoff miniatures are just what these hobbyists desire. The more unique, the better. And for makers, selling and not trashing all of this material is a financial and environmental win.
“We hate to just toss [misprints] in the trash,” says 3D printed miniature company CovetedForge. Instead, it sells a one-pound “box of shame” for nearly $60 plus $10 shipping.
Failed Prints Given a New Life
You never know what you’ll get in the mystery boxes of cast-off prints sold on Etsy, which is part of the fun.
CovetedForge can only promise that its misprints are in various scales, ranging from 28 mm up to 120 mm. “We charge by unpacked weight and carefully pack everything to ensure it doesn’t get more broken,” it says. “Quality varies from near-perfect to relatively rough looking.”
Raven Roost Games is another successful 3D printing company specializing in figurines and gaming pieces, offering an extra-large “Chest of Flawed Potential” for $18 plus $5 for shipping on Etsy. The company has filled hundreds of orders so far.
One kitbatsher on Etsy, Alex Medina, said his “Chest of Flawed Potential” was a “great value for the bits you get and a really cool way to be able to practice and hone your painting skills without sacrificing your expensive and prized minis.”
Another Etsy shopper, Michelle Kime, sought out failed prints for the same reason: painting practice. “I got lots of orks and goblins in my bag,” she says. “There’s two huge monsters that I’m quite excited for. Those two alone are worth the price of the box, for me. I’m just getting started in painting minis, and this is perfect to practice.”
Yoder3Ddesigns specializes in 3D printing articulated dragons and fidget toys and promises perfection to its Etsy shoppers, so any tiny flaw lands prints in the company’s Grade B Misprints offering, which sell for anywhere from $5 to $10 plus shipping.
One customer, Christopher Wagoner, took a chance on the misprints and was pleasantly surprised. “I ordered two different ‘misprints’ [from Yoder3Ddesigns] and they were some of the best misprints I’ve ever seen in my life,” he says. “The one big dragon will be fixed and cleaned up and then join my hoard of dragons.”
3DEgos, a professional miniature 3D printing company, has sold hundreds of its “Mystery Value Box” of miscellaneous Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer terrain misprints and failed miniatures on Etsy for $56 per 8 x 8 x 8-inch box.
“I was very nervous about buying the mystery box,” one 3DEgos customer said in a review, “but I’m not disappointed at all. As a 3D maker, I completely understand when prints aren’t at a level good enough for selling and I think this is a great way to help recover time and material costs. The defects will be easy to either cover up with paint or work around in some crafty way.”
How To Sell Your Unwanted Prints on Etsy
Naturally, anyone can open a shop on Etsy and sell failed prints, but the apparently successful sellers – those with dozens of reviews and hundreds of orders – have a few things in common.
Have the Volume
First, they can meet demand. Only the sellers 3D printing hundreds if not thousands of parts a week will have enough failed prints to offer as a bulk product on Etsy without constantly being out of stock. However, there’s nothing stopping you from selling your one box of misprints; it could be exactly what someone needs.
One company on Etsy, the aptly called PrinterError, sells its individual misprints saying that they are “imperfect objects for an imperfect world.” These misprints have nearly 250 overall positive reviews on Etsy from customers saying that they could hardly tell that their purchase wasn’t perfect. The company’s Styx Vase sells for $99 perfect, but just $42 for the imperfect version.
Be Overly Honest About the Parts
The next key to success seems to be complete transparency on size, quality, materials, color, and especially scale, which is essential for a lot of gaming environments. It isn’t enough to simply call it a “mystery box” and be done with it. People will negatively review you if they feel misled.
For example, KaitiesCustomCookies‘ “5 Cookie Cutters Misprints Surprise Box”, which sells for about $10 on Etsy, contains parts with cosmetic imperfections. The company is upfront that these imperfections “do not in any way affect the way they cut through dough.” Perfect cutters from this company sell for about $5 each.
Sell at a Reasonable Price
From the customer reviews on Etsy, it’s clear that every batch of misprinted parts will have some pieces that the buyer will find completely unusable, but if the price is low enough, they’ll overlook it if the majority of parts are nicely printed. If selling by weight or volume, don’t stuff your box with large, heavy prints you imagine could be broken apart. Customers seem to prefer quantity, but if taking requests is an option, be open to your customers’ needs.
License: The text of "Don’t Throw Away Failed Prints – Sell Them, Instead!" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.