Does It Make Sense To Outsource 3D Printed Product Design?
I don't know about all of you, but I have way more ideas and unfinished projects than I do time or CAD skills. I mean, yeah, I'm decent at creating single parts of low to moderate complexity. I definitely recommend that all of you learn your way around at least one CAD software, because it really is the best way to get the most out of your 3D printer. But still, while I'm learning and improving, my creative ideas definitely outpace my current skill level. And plus, I honestly just don't have time to bring all the projects that I dream up to fruition. Now you guys might not know this, but after literal decades of practice and trial and error, I've gotten really, really good at delegation.
I've learned that I'm a lot happier and more effective when I do what I do best and then delegate the rest. Which is why I don't edit my own videos... thank you, Eric. Or do my own bookkeeping... thank you, Leslie. So while I genuinely love doing CAD and I certainly plan to keep improving and practicing, in this video, I want to explore whether or not it's feasible, practical and affordable to actually delegate some of that CAD work ranging from simple things like modifying existing designs to suit your own needs, all the way up to more complex things like designing your own products that you could potentially sell.
Along the way, I'll be documenting how much it costs to do it, how easy it is, and how the results actually turn out. So if you, too, have all sorts of ideas and aspirations for 3D prints, or maybe you want to start a 3D printing business, but don't yet have the CAD skills or the time to make all of that a reality, you're definitely gonna want to stick around. Let's get after it. Fortunately, the folks over at Fiverr agreed to sponsor this video and give me some credits to play around with and get some stuff made, which is honestly really convenient because I actually use Fiverr all the time.
And also my wife works in the marketing department at Fiverr and has literally been hounding me for ages to actually do a video with Fiverr. So, this will give me some points at home. Yes, Fiverr was once mostly silly $5 gigs, like getting someone to record a funny voicemail message for you. But honestly, a lot has changed since then. These days they have every kind of service you could possibly imagine, including physical services, like actually 3D printing and painting models for you, all the way up to legal services, for example, that cost four or even five figures, and everything in between.
They also have Fiverr Pro, which is what I personally use and which features vetted and super high quality sellers, with premium level service and prices. For our purposes in this video, we're going to be looking at CAD and 3D sculpting services. And even there, there is a wide range of different services to choose from. To start with though, I wanted to kind of get my feet wet and try out some relatively simple services, such as modifying existing designs to suit my needs, and see if I would really be able to communicate what I want via text and then get results that actually met my needs. Now, a little bit of background here.
In an upcoming video, I'm going to be doing a monster project where I use multiboard to basically renovate my entire workshop, so do make sure that you're subscribed and ring the bell icon so that you know when that one comes out. And one of the things that I want to do as part of that project is to actually use multiboard to create a fully-functional charging station for all my different accessories, or your accessories, because needless to say, I always share all of my designs with all of you guys. The only thing about this is I've been procrastinating, actually generating the designs I need for like months. You see, because some parts of multiboard are still in beta, some components are only available in STL format rather than STEP, and my design software of choice, which is OnShape, has really limited availability to work with mesh files, which means that if I really, really want to modify a part properly and the STEP file isn't currently available. To do it right, without hacks and workarounds, I ideally would want to work in a mesh software like Blender. I know my way around Blender somewhat, but as I actually talked about in an entire video before, I always seem to make a huge mess of non-manifold geometry, and I literally cannot count how many times a quick five minute change, like moving a face, has turned into one or two hours of my life that I'll never get back.
Also, I'm already super busy as it is, what with video deadlines and kids and, you know, like, life. So instead, I searched through Fiverr's marketplace and I found two service providers on the lower end of things, like $10 per gig. I then messaged both and I actually immediately got a reply from one named Gaurav, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, who said he was super happy to do it. So I fired off the file that I wanted and the changes I wanted, which entailed adding a large 15x3 millimeter magnet to an existing multiboard part, so that it would mount the panels to my shelves and be removable, while also making the front face three millimeters thinner, so it wouldn't hover.
Now, if that doesn't make sense to you, and it's a little confusing, don't worry about it. I am going to do a full video and share all of that information in a different project video later. Fortunately, it did make sense to Gaurav, or Gaurav, because no joke, in less than an hour, he sent me the 3D rendering plus the file itself. Impressive.
The only thing is, because I am still a relative newcomer to multiboard and I'm still kind of figuring out what parts do what, I realized that I actually wasn't using the ideal part to do what I wanted and actually another would be much better. No worries. The homie Gaurav agreed to do that one as well for another $5, which was pretty sweet. We went back-and-forth on things like clearances and eventually we did get a part that was exactly what I wanted. But then I realized that those are actually also a bit of a pain and they kind of jiggle when inserted, So I actually asked him to add the same magnet hole to a screw-in multiboard thingy, I think it's called a large thread, and then also shortened the threads on that one, which he was happy to do for another $10. This time, everything worked perfectly.
So for those of you keeping track at home, we have already designed three parts, which by the way, I own the rights to per Fiverr's Terms of Service, so I will be uploading them and linking them in the description, and we've done all of that for a running total of $25. Not bad, though my takeaway lesson is to be absolutely sure which part you need and how you want it to actually work before you pay someone to do it, because I could have gotten exactly where I wanted to be for just $10 if I'd done a little bit of test fitting with the parts before sending them over. In any case, Gaurav nailed everything that I threw at him so I will link his profile in the description below if you'd like to send him some work. Onward and upward to the next idea, and I am actually really excited to share this one. See a few days ago, I had an epiphany, like the whole purpose of this video is to see if we can use Fiverr services to delegate work that would take us time. But what if, and stay with me here, I delegated a task to Fiverr to create a tool that would then do the work for me automatically, doing work that would normally take me hours.
It sounds pretty intriguing, right? So, here's the thing. You might already know that I have this wall of fame here behind me where I put the names of my top Patreon supporters up as a show of thanks, and there's a link in the description if you'd like to see your name up among them. Now those are great and in very small quantities, one or two every few months, it's no problem to spend that minute or two per label retyping the name in all caps, then rendering the label, then exporting it, then saving the file, then dragging it into the slicer, but recently I had an interior designer friend over here to kind of help me try and level up the workspace and help it be more visually appealing. She suggested that one of the things that makes my space so visually cluttered, besides the fact that you can, you know, see all the clutter, is just how disorganized all of my bins are.
So she actually suggested that I needed more uniform organization in the actual bins, and on top of that, that I needed proper 3D printed or laser cut labels that would really kind of make that part of the studio look clean and uniform. But then when I went into a quick spreadsheet to try and plan all the different ones that I would need to make, it really, really quickly became like a lot of labels. And of course, I'd always need to be adding more labels as I change or rearrange or repurpose bins or start new projects. So here's what I did. First, I asked ChatGPT to design my perfect label for me in OpenSCAD, complete with borders, auto scaling text, magnet cutouts, and after about 10 minutes or so of going back and forth, I had exactly the design that I wanted. I then asked ChatGPT how we could automate actually generating individualized labels, and I was told that what I needed was a Python script.
But when I tried to get ChatGPT to actually generate that Python script for me, it kind of came up short and try as I might, I just couldn't get ChatGPT to actually spit out something that would actually work. So instead, in a moment of peak 2025 laziness, I told ChatGPT to actually create a description of what we were trying to do because I was frankly too lazy to type it up, and I don't know anything about Python or OpenSCAD's command line functionality, and I then copy pasted that description to a bunch of Python developers on Fiverr. I sent out a few messages, I got a few quotes, including one for like $250 plus, but then I happened upon my new friend, Ali, who agreed to do it for, get this, $20. I went to bed and I then started my weekend and about 30 hours later I had a delivery. Now at first the actual program didn't work, but it turned out later that it wasn't Ali's fault, but actually it was that I needed to modify my SCAD file to actually remove the definition of the text string. But once I did that.
I now have a Python script that I can fill in, which will take any CSV list of items that I want labels for, and in a matter of seconds, spit out both STL files and the complementary SCAD files in case I want to tweak or modify individual labels. Oh, and if I make a mistake, for example, I realize that I need to make the magnet cutouts slightly bigger after printing one sample, or again, when I decide that the labels are too big, too big or too tall, or the five different other ways that I'd refine the design after generating all 40 plus labels, no sweat. I just modify the OpenSCAD design template. I delete the entire directory of the incorrect labels, and then I hit enter to execute the command again and get all of the new fixed ones.
Sick. Personally, I'll be using this for all sorts of stuff around the studio. In fact, it works with literally any OpenSCAD file that uses the variable text string for text. So at the very basic level, I can use it for adding patrons and YouTube members to my wall of fame, but it can do so much more. For example, if you wanted to make hundreds of personalized products or keychains or some kind of flexibles, all you would need to do is use that variable and boom, it will automatically add your text to every single one of them.
And of course, I am going to upload it to Printables so that all of you can use it for whatever projects you want as well. There will be a link in the description and I really can't wait to see you guys upload makes of the different ways you implement this script. And again, it's all thanks to Ali. So thank you, Ali. And I'll link to him in the description as well, in case you guys want to hire him to do something similar for your own projects. But now let's get to the final boss and honestly, the main reason that I actually wanted to do this video in the first place.
See, for the last few months, I've been toying around with this idea for a multiboard add-on component that I think is going to be really, really awesome and super useful for a whole lot of people, myself included. So I'm pretty excited about it. So I hope you guys will indulge me for a second while I try to kind of explain my vision for this. So you know how pretty much everything is switching to USB-C as a standard for charging, I feel like I spend half of my day charging various different lights, cameras, microphones, batteries, and so on. Many of the time I'm doing all of them at the same time, but I don't want to have like five or ten USB cables dangling from an outlet. So the basic idea of what I want to achieve is to create a kind of docking station, kind of like the battery chargers that we talked about earlier, but with a USB-C male instead of a female.
I actually had created a quick prototype of this kind of station with hot glue, just to see how convenient it would be to plug in and charge my components in this way, and it was honestly pretty great. Like I really loved being able to just take my components, grab something like a light and plug it in with one hand. So my vision is to create a component for multiboard that allows you to add your own male USB-C dongle to a multiboard, which you could then space out from other components based on what you plan to charge there, and also orient the plug in whichever way you need it to be for the components port. Now, obviously you don't want the weight of the product all resting on that USB-C port, and you probably also don't want the wires to be dangling in such a way that they would be if there were a shelf. So I figured that the best way to do this is with some kind of 45-degree rest, as well as various sizes of that rest to support the part that you're charging.
Now, that's kind of the big idea. But again, with this one, I really wanted to try out a more higher end Fiverr seller who wasn't just going to do exactly what I asked, but rather use their own expertise and skills as a product designer to come up with something unique, and hopefully even better than I could have imagined. So my first step was to actually record a six and a half minute explanation video, which probably did a good job filtering through people who were not serious about working with me, just kind of explaining the entire idea as well as the constraints and the overall vision. Then I uploaded that video and sent a link to it with a brief explanation to six different freelancers with higher end services and higher average ratings.
I was super excited to see that literally five out of the six responded within one hour, and some of them even apparently went off and had a meeting with their design teams, though that design team ultimately decided that this was kind of outside of their skill set. But hey, the whole idea of this video is to delegate CAD work so someone else can be working on it in the background while I'm off doing other work. So let's go ahead and do that. I'm going to record some B-roll here for all of you, and we'll skip to future Jonathan to hear how it went. Hey, so it's the start of a new week, and at the end of last week, I went back-and-forth with a few different sellers, including one who hopped on a Zoom call with me, which was a new experience for me on Fiverr, just to discuss but then they quoted me $1,500, which I honestly don't think is reasonable for what we're trying to do. Eventually, I narrowed it down to someone named Muhamad, even before he actually quoted me on price, because he seemed to really understand what I was trying to accomplish.
He was super responsive, and in fact, he understood so well that he began sending me renders even before we'd agreed on a price. And actually, while I thought that an experienced product designer would make things much more sophisticated and complicated, for example, creating some kind of like rotating or swivel mechanism or a parametric design file that would allow people to scale the supporting rest depending on the devices. In this case, I guess he went with more of an Occam's razor type approach. In other words, the simplest solution is usually the best. His design is literally just an angled platform attached to a snap for the multiboard, with a hole passing through both. And despite the fact that Mohammed had no experience with the multiboard ecosystem before this, it was actually his idea to take advantage of the flexibility and modularity of the system, and just to add blank segments of the same thing to the core charger piece to extend the support to the left or the right, rather than dealing with parametric design and having the user customize it.
I'm honestly not sure why I didn't think of that myself, but it was really cool for me to see Muhamad take my idea and improve it by just simplifying it and drawing on the fundamentals and the kind of ethos of what multiboard ultimately is about. Anyways, throughout the weekend, we went back-and-forth brainstorming different ways to improve this design until I came in today, which is Sunday, the start of our work week here in Israel, and I was able to print the first prototype. Now there were some issues, including hole size and the angle, not really allowing for a good print orientation, but Muhamad was really quick to reply and offer some suggestions. We agreed that I would give him a few different hole sizes for different USB cables that I have around the shop, and he would then also modify the design to have a larger angle and closed off ends, both of which should improve our printability and strength.
He's also going to give me three versions of the design. One with a horizontal port, one with a vertical port, and one with no port at all. And he did quote me for $100 all of this, and let me know that there would be additional costs if we do need more revisions. And honestly, while a $100 isn't super duper cheap for what basically boils down to 3 STLs, I don't think it's unreasonable either. When you factor in the fact that this task required creative thinking, learning all about multiboard and how it works, and also includes giving me full rights to these files and ownership, I could see myself doing this again in the future, particularly if it's to design a file that I want to print or sell commercially. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
I'm still waiting for the final files now. So we're going to use the magic of video editing and switch to future Jonathan to see how things turned out. All right, FilaFam.
Welcome back. It's a new day. We have a new prototype revision and I think also some new lessons if you are considering working with freelancers. So here's the prototype that Muhamad gave me last and you can see I've managed to fish the cable through and get it to come out. I needed to use tweezers. Uh, the hole is a little loose, so I'll either need to insert glue before I push it back through, or we designed it so it can be put on the build plate and you can use a moderate amount of XY hole compensation, but that will also change the holes here.
So you don't want to go absolutely ham with it. But there are a couple little issues besides the fact that it will push through if I try to charge something on it, I don't consider that an issue So here's what we got and here's what I realized. I was short sighted and we'll get to the lesson in a second. So we fished the cable through we put it on. Muhamad's using a normal snap so that it'll be very quick and easy to relocate it and also to add on additional units.
If we used a screw, then you wouldn't be able to add on additional units because you wouldn't be able to turn them. So we have the snap here, right? Couple things. Number one, I think you see the issue, he's put, he's left the lip of the snap on there, which I will tell him to just remove and push the snap so this sits flush on there. But number two is, because we're using a snap, Instead of a screw in, uh, it's a little loose and we'll probably start to flex.
It's not a weight bearing snap. It's a normal snap. So either we switch to a weight bearing snap, which is one solution that I have for him, uh, and then it should not pull out and hook like that.
Or that the original plan was to come from behind, Giggity, and use a screw to screw this on. But then I realized I thought we would be able to fit the USB-C through there, and we are definitely not going to be able to. So another solution would be to, I could probably test this in the slicer, just adding a negative object, but to add something so we can push the USB-C through, because if we do that, then this is going to be rock solid. Even more so than a weight bearing snap, and that's why we originally planned to do it this way. I hope that all makes sense. I'm going to send this video as well to Muhamad, and, uh, we will see what he comes up with.
But now, the lesson, which is I'm a little worried that he's going to charge me more, I don't know. Muhammad, if you're watching this, totally fair. You told me that you'll charge more for additional revisions or changes. But the lesson here, if you are considering working with freelancers is definitely agree on a lot of revisions, because as you know, if you design things, and I don't know why I forgot this, cause I sometimes do design things myself, you're going to need a lot of revisions of going back-and-forth, and if you're paying per revision, that's not good. I've seen some other people do projects on Fiverr with 3D printing, and they've agreed on five revisions back-and-forth, which totally would have covered me for this. I might have to now pay extra because I didn't negotiate that upfront with Muhamad.
So a little lesson, I hope you guys are learning, if you're going to work with freelancers yourself. All right, let's get to it and get this done so I can get this video out for all of you. Okay FilaFam, we are back. We've gone a few revisions deep and some failed prints deep, and I think we have the solution here. So as you can see, we have a shorter model, and we will also have a longer model. If you're charging a bigger device, the idea of just cutting out in the slicer worked out perfectly.
So we'll publish a file that is just cut out, uh, like this. You can push the USB cable through, then push it through this snap. It's a little tricky to get it through, especially if the tolerance, uh, is, uh, you know, very tight, but what I recommend doing is pushing it up like that. This one isn't tight enough. Uh, so there will be three different versions depending on your USB-C cable, but you can also just push it through, put some glue inside cause we don't want glue messing up our nice clean surface, put some glue inside, push it through, clean it up, let it dry. And there you go.
And then, uh, you just screw in on the back. And that is going to be tight as all heck. Okay.
And there you go. There will also be a vertical version and there will be blank versions. So you can build this out alongside if say you have a longer device like this or the USB port is not on the center. Um, USB ports fortunately for us are reversible, so you would put it like that. You would have the second version. This we'll just use as an example here.
We'll go like that, and you would plug it in like that. The weight of it is mostly resting on the 45 degree, a little bit on the charger. That should do the trick. I'm obviously going to test and experiment with this.
But I would say, well done, Muhamad. He was kind enough not to charge me for revisions because these were simple revisions. But I'm going to go ahead and give him a nice 25 percent tip anyways. And I think I might even be impatient enough to hire him to do the power strip as well, because the one that's already online isn't going to work for my needs, and I really want to get started on this. But to see all of that and to see how this comes together in one big, massive charging wall, you're going to have to stay subscribed and hit the bell icon.
Now I have a lot of work assembling this and another three and a half meter white version of this on the wall over there. So we better wrap this video up. So, where do we stand after all of this experimentation? Well, well, all in all for this video, I spent a grand total of $145. In exchange, I got three files modified, three completely new designs, and one really powerful automation tool that I am going to use to save many, many hours of time for the indefinite future. To be honest, it would be really, really cool to actually track how much time I saved and calculate if this was economical for me or not, but we unfortunately can't. For one, I didn't track how much time I spent messaging back and forth with different freelancers to have a comparison of how much time was spent.
And what's more, any estimate as to how long it would have taken for me to do it myself would honestly just be guessing unless I actually went and redid the work myself. But beyond that, I think we've definitely demonstrated the kind of core concept that you can delegate certain elements of CAD design, or programming to help turn your ideas for projects into reality. And again, I'm in no way saying that you shouldn't learn CAD, because you definitely should. But I think that, for me, having something like Fiverr in my back pocket is a great way to save myself some time, to make progress on projects that I've been procrastinating on, or to supplement my own skills. Like, I definitely am not going to be hand painting any models that I print.
I do, on the other hand, enjoy doing CAD work, but I have zero desire to learn programming languages like Python or OpenSCAD. And if I were running a 3D printing business, I'd probably want to focus my time on things like market research, marketing, and product ideation, rather than being the actual one sitting in CAD trying to create new products. After all, for that, I now have Ali, Muhamad, and Gaurav that I can draw on as resources. And again, if you want to send them some work or check out Fiverr as a whole for any other type of task that you need done, I will put links in the description.
That's all for this week, but I'll see all of you on The Next Layer.
2025-02-01 05:23
