If you had asked me that question two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Our journey began back in the summer of 2023. My then 11 year old son Xaiden went to a tech camp that focused on 3D printing and designing. Why did he choose that camp? Because the year before, he was there learning about coding Roblox games, and that camp shared a room with the 3D printing group. He saw all the funny designs they were creating , and he wanted to try it. So I signed him up without hesitation – anything to encourage my gamer child to learn more about coding and tech design. (And the course came with a 3D printer you got to take home and keep!).
Throughout the weeklong course, he brought home tiny, 3D printed items that he had made. I thought they were fun, but didn’t really see them beyond small pieces of plastic. Fast forward a few weeks, and the printer that came with the course was delivered to our house. I helped him set it up, and he showed me how to use a slicer to import a file, and send it to the printer. I was amazed when I watched how the printer actually worked! He was printing little trinkets, but I wanted to go bigger – so I started researching designs that were already created by “professionals”. That is where I came across the crystal dragon by Cinderwing3D, and that one file changed our lives.
3D printing uses .STL files (think JPEG, PNG, etc). You download the file to your computer, then you use a slicer software to upload the file into. The slicer is where you can manipulate the object you want to print, and the program slices the model into many horizontal layers. For example, in the slicer you would set how big you want the object to be, how many of the object you want printed, you can set colors if you have a printer that prints multi color, how strong you want the object to be, and a host of other settings. There’s a LOT of settings to consider, and while my son knew the basics, he did not have the in depth knowledge of things, and we learned later that our settings were not correct on our initial dragons. That being said, once you have your settings set up how you want them in the slicer, it calculates the exact paths and movements the printer needs to follow for each layer, generating a set of instructions (often called G-code) that tells the printer how to build the object step by step. This process ensures that the printer can recreate your design accurately, one layer at a time. Once you click Print, it sends the file to the printer. That is where the magic happens!!
The 3D printer works by turning the digital design into a physical object, one thin layer at a time. It heats and melts a material – we use PLA plastic – and carefully deposits it layer by layer, with each new layer sticking to the one beneath it until the object is fully formed. It really is mesmerizing to watch!
That first dragon…it was amazing! Seeing it opened the door to all the countless possibilities, and immediately my entrepreneur mind started churning. Coincidently, I had recently seen a Facebook post for a local craft fair that was looking for kid vendors – it encouraged children to write a business plan, and come up with a product that they could sell at the fair. I showed it to Xaiden, and that’s all it took – we were going to be in business selling dragons!
So much has happened since then, and I don’t want to cram it all into one blog post, but let’s just say that the craft fair was a huge success! Afterwards, we researched and learned a lot together, upgraded our printer to a larger, more capable one, opened a TikTok Shop, opened an Etsy Shop, purchased 4 additional printers to keep up with sales, and now here we are - launching our very own website!!
