this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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3D printers and laser cutters are significantly cheaper now. Also those and CNC machines, people can use them for business like you send them the file and they ship you the item. Laser cutters people use for custom engraving, they just buy a bunch of blank keychains, coasters, etc off alibaba and make them on demand. You can find tons of these stores on etsy (people will just steal the models for popular characters and print them out on demand for a profit), here's a more expensive one. Or like my family, print out warhammer 40k models instead of buying them because it's literally cheaper.
Also these they might not have bought them new, like our university will rarely get rid of equipment to free up storage and because it's so specialized and so few people know how to get access, you can get a really good price. We had two rooms of printers that we had to get rid of because students kept breaking them and it was too much of a pain to keep them running. We also bought new milling equipment to upgrade the shop and got rid of the old stuff which was working fine.
I've fixed a few laser engravers for people that use them for jewelry. The current price of one for, let's say, ring engraving (3 axes) is in the ballpark of about 7 to 10K euros. And we're talking about the cheap Chinese copies here, not ones made by brand name companies.
This is still expensive in terms of personal ownership. Unless you use it for your business, there is no way you can buy this solely for your YT channel.
My dad fixed up a Chinese laser cutter to save money (it was like 1k by the end of it), it sat in the basement for a while there. Personally, I assume YT is not their only job. I've worked with people that have sunk way more than 10k into their hobbies, the car people in particular are sometimes unbelievable and that I don't get. Drone and boat people too. The small planes are kind of cool. At least with these tools, you can actually make money off them.
Apparently, people have way more money than they let on... cuz when I say I don't have money, I litelarly don't have money for anything else except food for the rest of the month.
I've definitely had people who were working for me say "I have four boats" and I'm like wtf bc I know how much they make. Then I find out they live over an hour away from work in the middle of nowhere, their mortgage is less than half my rent and two of the boats are "project" boats that don't even run. The only drone person I know is childfree, huge savings right there, and they don't live in a city either. Tbh some of the things people do for these things, the amount of work does not make sense to me but if that's what you want to do with every single weekend, go right ahead.
Plus I find these people with a lot of money invested in their hobbies tend to be older, like 30-40 years old. Then I'm like, I could probably afford a 5k 3d printer in a decade but that's not what I would spend my money on.
I'm 38... the only thing I have on my name is an apartment. Fully paid, but that's it.
But, than again, I don't live in the US or any western country, so I'd have to take that into account as well... and that I have a child.
You can get laser cutters for far cheaper than 7K.
You can build engraving lasers for less than $500. Lots of people have expensive hobbies, some decide to make content with them.
Not the likes I've seen in some of these clips. Sure, the 1W ones, yeah, you can. 20+W ones, no. The head and the control board alone cost between 1.5k and 2k.