The first thing Bearded Printer ever 3D printed was half of a Baymax. It was the sample file that came with his first printer, an Anet A8 kit. He bought it because an Ender 3 was more than his budget could handle. He built the kit, felt pretty competent about it, and sent a print. He hadn't leveled the bed. He didn't know you were supposed to. The nozzle started digging into the plate, and he let it go for about thirty seconds, wondering if that was just what 3D printers do, before he decided it probably wasn't and shut it off. Then he noticed some screws on the bed, turned them until it stopped grinding, sent the print again and went to bed. His roommate was up late, saw the print had failed and turned the printer off for him. So he woke up to half a Baymax. His first clog went about the same way. A safety pin was too big for the nozzle, so he took the nozzle outside and hit it with a propane torch. And it worked! The plastic oozed out and the clog cleared. He's got the same kind of story about his career. In high school he wanted to be an architect and took CAD classes. Then in college he took an engineering course that had some MATLAB programming in it, and he was terrible at it. He didn't understand it at all and passed with a C-minus. So, naturally, he changed his degree to software engineering. That's what he does for a living now. He says he never really stuck with a hobby growing up. He skateboarded, he played outside with his friends, and the hobby changed all the time. In high school his dream job was data entry, because he liked typing. What he did grow up with was a dad who fixed everything around the house, from plumbing and electrical to the cars and the yard. If they were going to put in a sprinkler system, the family did it themselves. "We figure it out, we do it ourselves." I think you can hear that in the Anet A8 story. It just took him a while to add the research. The A8 finally ended when it ran out of filament mid-print. He was so done with it that the failed print was still sitting on the bed while he ordered the next printer. He'd seen Linus Media Group's Short Circuit on the Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, heard the words "runout sensor" and was sold. That was 2023. This time he did look around before he pre-ordered it, and he watched the videos on leveling the bed and setting the Z offset first. The little Buddha that came with the Elegoo finished in about half an hour. He took it downstairs to show his wife, and she said, "Already?" On the A8 that Buddha would have taken something like four hours. Once the prints looked good, he had the thought everybody has: I can sell these. But he didn't want to pay licensing to sell other people's models. So he moved from Tinkercad to Fusion and started designing his own. He says it was getting the Neptune 4 Pro that made design click for him, and he calls it probably the biggest hobby he's ever gone all in on. Now his models have about a quarter of a million downloads. When I brought that number up, he said his parents have always backed him, but there's something about a bunch of strangers telling you what you're doing is good that makes you feel like you're actually making a difference. He still remembers the first time a model broke a hundred downloads. It was a finger puppet, a little top hat for your finger with a face he drew. He was thrilled. I asked him how he thinks about a number that size. Most of it, he said, is one water dragon, the first design he'd call viral. He doesn't see himself as an amazing creator or designer. He thinks of himself as "just a guy with a hobby." Then he told me what he's doing with all that. Most of the people following him came for the floppy models. He loves the floppies and he'll keep releasing them. But he wants to design things that are more helpful to people, so he's been making bowls and lamps and lights, and he isn't expecting those to pull the same downloads, because that's not what his followers came for. He described it as having to build up followers all over again in a different genre. He's doing it anyway. When I asked what he'd tell somebody who wants to start designing or making content, he said this: "Don't be afraid to be bad at something. There's no way you can be good at something without first being bad at it." When he first started designing, he entered Printables contests knowing full well he wouldn't win, just to get himself designing things. He released models he knew were bad. And yes, he learned his lesson and started watching tutorials. He still likes trying to figure things out on his own, and falls back on a tutorial when he can't. So what's the thing you've been waiting to get good at before you let yourself start it? Find Bearded Printer: beardedprinter.com · @BeardedPrinter on YouTube and Twitch Come hang out: discord.gg/asylumlifemakes Live life to the fullest. Grow in wisdom. Show what you've learned generously.
