CNC files are now a commodity

When I first started CNCKing.com (then WoodMarvels.com), I began with creating designs for CNC lasers. The reason is simple, if you have a laser, you have some money (keep in mind that was 8 years ago).

After a few books, I got the opportunity to do the same for the CNC router industry, again, if you have a CNC router, you have money. The price points ARE lower for these machines compared to CNC lasers but most of my friends with one usually have the other. The designing aspect behind CNC lasers and routers is almost identical as are material choices.

After designing for both CNC lasers and routers, I began down the route of 3D printers… logically, if you have ANY CNC machine, you should have money… that’s where I was wrong. The best performing designs I sell on CNCKing.com are laser, down the list are CNC router and way down… to the point of being non-existent… are 3D printer files. Why?

3D is a commodity

I taught myself 3D modeling and animation, without a background in 3D, a 3D printer is completely useless. I saw this as an advantage as, hey, CNCKing.com has 3D printer files you can buy and print! This makes sense on paper but in the real world, it doesn’t. Why? People who buy consumer 3D printers have no money… that’s why they bought them in the first place!

Now, let me quantify this a bit further. The reason why 3D printer owners have no money to buy files for their 3D printer is because they don’t need to… you can find the files FREE everywhere! The biggest source? Thingiverse… followed by a few dozen other smaller sites hardly worth mentioning. I know of these other sites because they send me emails weekly asking me to upload all my files for a share of the “profits”… if only they knew what I know.

The Thingiverse Effect

What Thingiverse did for the 3D artist out there hoping to make money from their designs was completely remove any incentive to work hard to make money from it… selling the digital file wise.

When ever I’m online to Chat on CNCKing.com, just about everybody looking for 3D printer files for their machine asks me for a free sample… they do this for CNC router and laser files too… but nowhere near as often. Point being, 3D printer files are a commodity with little to no value. I wrote about this earlier across other industries but people just aren’t willing to pay for something they can get for free anymore… and I totally understand it. Music and other artists understand the push and pull of money when it comes to their customers.

I had a visitor to CNCKing.com ask me why I haven’t designed any new 3D objects for sale on the site in a long time, basically, I asked them how much they were willing to pay for a cool model, they told me nothing… and I told them they answered their own question.

CNC Files are a Commodity

Before you start thinking that other industries aren’t affected, take a look at kickstarter… even my own interview site, CNCKingdom.com… you’ll see interviews with people designing CNC routers and lasers that are a fraction of my Trotec Speedy 400 flexx or ShopBot Desktop. I own a 3D Systems Cube too! All awesome machines.

As more and more people discover the wonders of CNC and drive down the price of machines at the entry level, the files and creations they make will increasingly flood the market. You already see this in forums… now people with Trotecs, Epilogs, ShopBots etc… are all looking for FREE files to cut and sell to their customers (???). It’s not a bad thing, it’s just how things evolved over time.

Not just people, just about every manufacturer of these CNC machines, 3D printers though Laser Engraves and Routers, offer free files to get started and monthly clubs to get more. Some of the stuff is actually pretty good too! What they have come to realize is that many people who buy these machines don’t want to design their own thing or simply don’t have the skill too… but if you offer them stuff to do with their machines, voila, you got a sale!

It’s not all bad

Where does that leave CNCKing.com? Well, I’m still generating sales through the site and it’s still going strong, but in entrepreneurship, there is always that sweet spot where you are in the perfect place with the perfect business model at the perfect time. I believe that WAS CNCKing.com. I can’t compete against free and to be honest, the enthusiasm and wow factor that all the people I knew in the industry when I was building WoodMarvels.com has died down quite a bit.

People got old, people got married, people got kids, people got jobs… and realized that they can get the files they want for free so that’s exactly what they did and stopped designing themselves… as they have also realized, there is no money in selling things for FREE.

How are designers making money then?

Sites like Shapeways and a bunch of other ones where designers are selling their physical products, not the files they are made from. You see, buying an industrial 3D printer is still extremely expensive and why bother when you can design something and sell it on a third party site physically for a fraction of the cost?

I’ve begun this slow migration myself with CNCKing.com, as the sale of files slowly slides and the sale of physical products including my books goes in the other direction. If anything, if you are a designer, you have to be like water in a river… flow down, not a rock trying to fight the current. Realizing their is a current is the first step towards success, the second is accepting how markets are ever changing and what use to work before won’t necessarily work the same way later.

Why do big companies like RIM that use to own the cell phone market and Kodak that owned the photographic one go under? They fail to evolve with changing times.