Hello everyone! I’m about to celebrate hitting a historic milestone for my MakerWorld profile, 200,000 downloads! I’m incredibly grateful and surprised to reach this many downloads and prints and want to thank each of you who has downloaded, printed, or even just viewed one of my models.
I published my first 3D model on September 25th, 2023, the F1 2023 Model Kit Card.
At this time, I had just started learning how to 3D model using FreeCAD for about 1-2 months. The first model I designed and printed was this very simple vent clip for my filament dryer.
This was before I had a Bambu Lab printer and I was using a Creality CR-6 SE. I had been using Creality printers on and off for a couple years, mostly for small work tasks and when I got my first Bambu Lab printer, things changed quite drastically for me!
For my birthday, my (now) wife got me an X1C combo and it completely blew me away with its incredible speed, automatic calibration, camera, and sensors. It cut down the printing time by over 70% and almost never had failed prints compared to my previous printer that I had to constantly calibrate, level, and unclog. Being able to print quickly and without worry really freed me to focus more on designing which ended up starting my career in 3D printing and modelling.
In the next few months, I designed a handful more models and was incredibly motivated with the MakerWorld reward system since it could actually earn me gift cards for filament, replacement parts, and hopefully even a 3D printer. I was fortunate that my designs were well received both by the users on MakerWorld as well as MakerWorld themselves as three of my models received the “Featured Model” badge.
It was about this time that I won my first award for a MakerWorld contest, my Swivel Fidget got an Excellent Participation award in the Fidget Toys contest. Once again, I was incredibly motivated to design more and shortly thereafter I won first place in the Make My Sign Contest with my Customizable Prize Wheel! I was deeply honored to win first place and hope to win another contest in the future!
Between these contests, I was able to earn my first free 3D printer using MakerWorld points and I got myself an A1 mini to speed up prototyping and have since expanded with another A1 mini, an A1, and hopefully an H2D really soon! My 3D printing workspace also has an AMS, 2 AMS Lites, and a filament dryer all stacked on a heavy duty shelf.
The next milestone I reached was some collaborative work with MakerWorld, where I designed a Mini Motorized Basketball Game for Maker’s Supply and the ASLAN and GAMIGIN model kits for the Exclusive Model Program (before it went public).
It was a good experience working with MakerWorld and was especially exciting to be able to work with the Maker’s Supply kits and parts before they went public and the sales of the parts kit from the Creator Program help me fund more projects to share with you all!
This brings us up to the latest two milestones for me, my most downloaded model and the model that allowed me to start working on 3D printing for a majority of my time. My most downloaded model at more than 27,000 downloads is the Clicker Fidget. I never imagined it would be so popular and reach that many downloads and I’m incredibly grateful for all those who downloaded and printed it. I’m very proud of the simple print-in-place design and was flattered to see that the spring and clicking mechanic has inspired a large amount of other clicker fidgets.
The most important model to me though, is the Crawler Tank, as it set off a chain of events that allowed me to focus a majority of my time and efforts to 3D printing and modelling.
Previously, I was a full-time Software Engineer and was modelling in my free time. However, after the Crawler Tank became very popular and the demand for more mecha model kits grew immensely, I was able to utilize the Exclusive Model Program coupled with the Commercial License Program to make it financially possible to put much more work into 3D modelling. So after the Crawler Tank I began the exceptionally fun journey of designing model kits and have designed over 80 new and different mecha model kits!
All of this now leads to my upcoming milestone of reaching 200,000 downloads! With about 120 models published, I’ve averaged over 1500 downloads and 1000 prints for each model that I’ve uploaded on MakerWorld and plan to continue to bring you all free model kits for you to 3D print!
In the coming year I have several goals:
- Reach 200,000 Total Prints
- Reach 30,0000 Followers
- Upload my 150th Model on MakerWorld
- Design and Upload 2D models for H2D Digital Cutting and Laser Cutting
I’d like to thank all of you who have downloaded any of my models for your support, interaction, and encouragement. I’d also like to thank all the wonderful designers that have inspired me to be more creative and try different design approaches; you can check out this list of incredible designers here. Lastly, I’d like to thank MakerWorld and Bambu Lab for supporting my work and allowing me to spend my time in a creative and fun field (and also thank you for the fast printers!)
Thanks again everyone! I have new and exciting models coming soon!
