83DCreate didn't start with a business plan, investment, or even a particularly clear vision of what it would become. It started with an Ender 3, a spare room, and a quiet belief that this could be something.
I'd been watching the 3D printing world for a while before I took the plunge. The prices of decent machines had dropped enough that it felt like the right moment. So I bought my first printer, set it up in a spare room, and started learning everything I could — often the hard way.
The early days
The first few months were humbling. Failed prints. Warped beds. Clogs I didn't know how to fix. I spent more time troubleshooting than I did actually printing. But that was also the education — every failure taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way.
The first orders came through eBay. Small things — cable clips, wall hooks, custom brackets. Nothing glamorous. But people were buying, and more importantly, they were coming back. That was the moment I realised this wasn't just a hobby.
Growing the farm
One printer became two. Two became four. Before long the spare room wasn't spare anymore — it was a proper production space. Every new machine brought new challenges: managing multiple print queues, tracking filament stock, keeping on top of maintenance across different printers.
That's actually what led to building FDM Foreman — I couldn't find software that did what I needed, so I built it. A print farm management platform that now runs on its own as a standalone product used by other farm operators across the UK.
What 83DCreate is today
Today, 83DCreate is a professional FDM printing service based in Linton, Swadlincote. We print for individuals, small businesses, hobbyists and makers. Everything from one-off custom parts to repeat production runs.
We've also branched out — 83DPrint is our on-demand print service with instant online quoting. The First Layer is a book I wrote about 3D printing for beginners, covering everything I wish someone had told me at the start. And BuyAgain grew out of needing a better way to track repeat eBay customers.
None of it was planned. All of it came from solving real problems we actually had.
Why I'm sharing this
83DChronicles exists because I think there's value in the honest story — not the highlight reel version, but the real version with the failed prints, the wrong decisions, and the things that worked better than expected.
If you're thinking about starting a 3D print business, or you're already running one and trying to figure out how to scale — I hope something here is useful. I'll be writing about materials, pricing, running a farm, building software products, and whatever else is going on behind the scenes.
The first layer is always the most important one. Everything else builds on top of it.
— Daniel Cantrill, Founder of 83DCreate