When I bought my x-carve in 2016, I never really gave much thought to making $$ with it. Until I did. It really started when I started making various plaques & coasters. Made enough to pay for the machine & upgrades, plus an extra $k or so over the past couple years. Not enough income to count on, but just some extra. I also haven’t really pushed marketing. Some people seem to be able to make a LOT of $$, but I’m not much of a woodworker, nor do I have the work space for decent woodworking equipment.
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Hi, so we are new to this whole CNC world but want to start a very small business with our ideas. As I started looking into creating maybe a website, or selling on Etsy the more I researched, the more I am realizing that if you are a legit business there are fees left and right for everything. Not to mention that you indeed have to report all your income from anything you sell. So etsy may seem like a dream channel, in reality everyone selling even only 1 item has to report it. I will assume that most of the Onefinity owners have bought the machine for the purpose of selling items in addition to some hobby gift projects. I would really love to know how you all structured your business, what entity you chose, if you do your own accounting or hire a company for that. When I started looking into the legalities, I thought we were done, this is the deep end. But having information is the key here (I will have a consultation with a local CPA, see what they have to say) and that shines a little light onto the darkness. Also, would love to hear success stories, how you have to price your items so those fees left and right don’t eat into profit. Thanks, have a great holiday season!
I found a very informative video outlining, with real examples, how this can be done for a CO2 laser cutter business. You may be able to draw comparisons that are hopefully helpful.
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Very cool…could you share the link to that video?
I’ll try not to be too embarrassed that I forgot that important step.
Sorry about that.
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All good! I enjoy a good scavenger hunt from time to time 
. Thanks for posting the link! I can’t wait to watch this.
So I am still getting the hang of this forum and did not realize this topic was already here before making another post.
Delivered my first commission today of (25) two-sided Christmas ornaments for a local organization. They are 4" in diameter and made from 3/4" poplar. I’ll type up what I learned from the process and what mistakes I made to help others who are just getting into CNC like I am. This’ll be a long-un so grab a beverage.
TL;DR: I charged $15 per ornament, but should have charged $20-25. Don’t know if the market would bear that $25 mark though. Thoughts?
THE GOOD: I learned A LOT about process and workflow and made money while doing it. Otherwise I would have been paying for materials to test on and the time I would have spent piddling wouldn’t have earned me one red cent in the short term. The client works for an area chamber of commerce and I hope to develop more business through this connection.
THE BAD: By the end of the project I realized that I had severely underestimated both machining time & finishing time and therefore my qoute did not reflect an accurate price point. I tried to shorthand the pricing by looking up what Esty sellers where charging for custom ornaments and did not realize they were all charging for single-sided ornaments. I qouted a lowball price for a product that was literally going to take twice the amount of work. Additionally, most of those custom ornaments on etsy are made with lasers which pre-finishes the engraved area in black.
MISTAKE 1: Not flattening my boards before engraving. Especially with the very fine cursive engraving, you have to surface your boards for the carves to be consistent.
MISTAKE 2: Using 1X6 instead of 1X12 boards. Once I realized that I was going to be surfacing both sides of every board anyways, I wished that I had just bought 1×12s and nested the ornaments in the design file. This would have cut my tool changes in half.
MISTAKE 3: I did not factor “spoilage” into my quote. I.E. there are (10) ornaments that I did not deliver to the client due to defects. The first (6) are just me screwing up my zero on the initial run and I wouldn’t consider those as “calculated to be included”, but (4) of those ornaments were defects due to finishing issues. They did provide me with the ability to test multiple paint/stain methods though. So good for learning.
Not including tool changes or paint/stain/sanding, each ornament took 88mins to machine. Including the “manual” steps , each ornament took about 110 mins.
THINGS I’D LOVE INPUT ON:
I used V-carving with a limited depth of cut for the “leaves” surrounding the R. Is that the best method to carve something that has sharp points? That definitely took the most time to machine.
I had to ask my fiancee’ to clean-up the small cursive text in her Silouhette software and send it to me as a large .png file before converting them to vectors in Carveco. It seemed like I was going to have to hand hand poly-line that text in Carveco to make it work otherwise as the “bitmap to svg” tool in that program couldn’t ever seem to get it right. Any suggestions on an easier way to accomplish this kind of task?
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Not all of us are RICH Accountants. That’s why I reading this post.
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I have the silhouette software as well. I have the paid version, I purchased it because it allows me to save files as SVG’s. And the trace tool on Silhouette software is really good. Take it as a learning experience, most of the stuff I sell, started with low price. Not too much profit for the work put in but I’ve learned a lot in the 4 months doing this on the side and has payed for the materials and new power tools, still hasn’t payed for the cnc itself but I bought this to keep me busy instead of playing video games and or couch potato-ing and I enjoy it, finally a hobby that potentially pays for itself. lots of time I end up redoing projects because of tear out, wrong measurements etc most of the time resurfacing pieces to blank slates. I’m Always able to make it work (so far).
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I have been using GIMP and Inkscape both free software. GIMP to trace a silhouette and then copy and paste into Inkscape to go from bitmap to svg. There are lots of tutorials online for both programs and you can’t beat “free-ninety -nine”
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Although this video deals with metal fabrication, I found a few interesting ideas that could be of interest and applicable:
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Long story short, guy, every idea is worth trying. Personally, I’ve tried about 55 business ideas until the 56th one worked. We should never give up, guys. Actually, the main thing I’ve understood is that big many = big risk. The bigger risk you can take, the more money you’ll make. At first sight, this rule seems to be very simple. Still, not anyone is actually ready to take on a big responsibility. Mainly businessmen take the biggest risks in the world. So, it all depends on your personality. Personally, I started by making investments. It all began when my brother shared an Investment banking resume template. Investments are the 3rd part of my income. So, that’s it, guys.
Well I thought I would update my experience. I created “CandL Workshop LLC”, created a Website and learned VCarve Pro and FreeCad. I really wanted to be legitimate, and do things above board.
I think I have grossed ~$250 over the life of my “business” life.
Am I upset nah. To be honest being “retired” I did not need to the income to pay the mortgage or eat. So a lot of higher priority events take away from shop time.
What I will say is everybody and their sister now has a CNC or knows someone with one. Ok maybe this is just my area but the market for nick knack’s like key trays, coasters … dare I say jack-o-lanterns is very competitive. When you consider benefits McD’s might be a better place to make money… until you find a niche.
Other thoughts:
- This thing makes creating general wood working jigs a breeze
- I have the 1F Journeyman now, having learned that I do not like tiling.
- I have a drill guide set, and I use 1/4 gage pins … the 1F cranks out custom patterns for the gage pins quickly
- Bit changes are a pain in the rump … Having a router setup, I really stick to 2 bits, 1/4" and 1/8", one tool change is about what I can tolerate.
- I will upgrade to a spindle when I can get an automatic tool changer. Just a 4 tool carousel would do me.
So I am enjoying the heck out of machine (when I get time), but my bank account is not growing.
Truth of the matter is I did not start a business when I bought the table saw / domino / track saw / “you name it”, why should I blame the 1F.
…
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I hear ya. I bought mine as a hobby; in the past I had access to a CNC router and I used to make templates for curved parts for my woodworking projects, and I wanted to continue doing that, and designing something on the screen and then having the machine fabricate it is as fun as heck. My wife as suggested I think about selling an occasional thing on Etsy; we’ll see. I’m certainly not interested in going down the road of some of the things I see on the Facebook group; i.e., spent hours making Halloween lanterns or some other knick-knack and then some more weekend hours sitting under a canopy at some outdoor event trying to sell them. As you say, not worth spending time in retirement for $7.27/hour. Here in this town I know bartenders that make $400-$600 in tips on a weekend shift; I could look at doing that if I really wanted to make the big bucks (which I don’t) 
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I’ve found that I really enjoy the process of “figuring it out.” Making something new that involves a new technique is really interesting and fun.
Once I have it figured out; I’m bored with it. I have no desire to turn into an assembly line and crank out hundreds of copies of the same thing. CNC machines are great at assembly line work - and I think that’s where a lot of profit originates, as you get better payback from the design time.
But this is a hobby for me - not a job. I’m in the “retired” camp, so that suits me just fine. I can see where money could be made, but I could return to my old job and come out ahead if money were the main object.
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