I am a hobbyist, and my job will probably never require me to design and print anything for work.
I do really enjoy the process of conceptualizing, designing, and printing, and have done so for myself and some close acquaintances.
I’ve spent many hours/days learning the tools of the trade and was wondering if there was an opportunity to make some money as a side gig. Has anyone been successful doing this, and how did you go about it?
Here are a couple of my early designs, I plan to upload more once I clean things up a bit.
What you are describing is simply being a design engineer. That’s what I do and I take on side projects once in a while. It’s not worth my time to simply 3D print things for people. The printer is simply a tool used for prototyping.