3D Printing Ideas For Students, Beginners – Where to Look For Designs For Your Next Project

3d-printing-ideasYou can find 3D printing ideas on the web. There are a lot of online websites that offer free and premium 3D print models and you will find them here.

Are you struggling to create your own 3D models? Are you looking for sites where you can download for 3D printer files?

If you say “yes” to any, then good news, there are actually tons of website that offers 3D printing ideas for students, beginners, businesses and schools. These sites are composed of 3D printer enthusiasts, hobbyists and professionals. They work together and share their models online so it will be helpful to others, like you and me. 3D artists are also here to sell their 3D printing ideas.

Since there are a number of sites that offer this service, we want to help you save time, so we compiled the best 3D printing websites where you can turn to for 3D printer designs.

Here’s a list of the places to find 3d prints whether it’s for business, home, schools, manufacturing or gifts.  Check it out today!

Thingiverse

Thingiverse

📌Thingiverse is a thriving design community for discovering, making and sharing 3d printer projects. There are over 1 million 3D models available on the site and this continues to grow, thanks to its active members.

This site has the world’s largest 3D print community. The members include designers, engineers, CAD drawing experts and anyone who are interested in 3D printing. Skilled artists are there too with 3d printing ideas to sell

Everyone in Thingiverse believes that everyone should be encouraged to create and remix 3D things no matter what your technical expertise is. In the spirit of maintaining an open platform, all the designs are encouraged to be licensed under Creative Commons license. Thus, anyone can use or alter it.

If you want to join Thingiverse, you can do so by simply sharing your Makes (prints of an existing design) or creating your own mod template for your favorite 3D design. This environment offers you great 3D printing ideas while inspiring you to make your own.

3D Warehouse

3D Warehouse

📌For those new to this craft and are looking for 3D models for 3D printer, you will definitely find what you are looking for at 3D Warehouse. The site has architecture, product design and scale models
.

It also specializes in hosting anything that was created with the popular 3D modeling software SketchUp.  There are over 1,500 free STL files in the site and you can filter it to “Only Show Printable Models” if you want to find 3D printer models that are ready for 3D printing.

GrabCAD

GrabCADGrabCAD is among the sites with the largest online community of professional designers, engineers, manufacturers and students. By joining this group, you will be able to connect to its almost 5 million members. The site offers you great 3d printer designs and ideas.

Aside from the Free CAD library where you can download and upload a great collection of 3D printer models, the site also offers online tutorials and gives you the opportunity to interact with engineers and designers.

This website also offers GradCAD challenge where you can use the power of the global online community to solve a design problem or make an old model work in a much lesser price.

📌GradCAD challenge is a great way to get the other members’ opinion or to inject fresh ideas in your 3D printer projects. This is the most effective way to get the engineering world work on your problem.  You can also introduce your company or product and your passion for optimum design through this.

Sketchfab

SketchfabSketchfab is another popular and helpful website for those looking for 3D designs. The site knows that a number of 3D printer enthusiasts spend hours making great 3D models without success, so they started this community. The website has over 2 million 3D printer models but only 5000 STL or OBJ files are free.

The website is empowering a new era of creativity by making it easy for you to publish and find 3D content online. If you join Sketchfab you will find a mix of artists, designers, architects, hobbyists and engineers that you can work with.

📌You can also find thousands of buyers and sellers to transact in confidence using its real-time 3D viewer and model inspector.

TurboSquid

TurboSquid

📌TurboSquid is another go-to website for those who are looking for 3D printing models. In fact, game developers, news agencies, architects, visual effect studios, advertisers and even creative professionals turn to TurboSquid for quality 3D models for 3D printer.

TurboSquid has over 3.5 million registered members with more than 500,000 3D printer models available for download. By using the models in the website, you will save time and focus your energy on how to add your own personality to your creation. According to those who use the TurboSquid 3D models, they save 27 hours per model they purchased.

For artists who have 3D printing ideas to sell or want to build a career by designing 3D printer models, you will also find the website helpful. TurboSquid supports the creative artists who supply the 3D designs.

Cults

CultsCults is a digital marketplace for 3D printer files. You can explore its 3D model library to find the best 3D printer models for free. A number of artists offer their models in formats like .STL, .OBJ or .SCAD in open-source or paid mode.

The website is connecting the 3D artists to those who are looking for designs. For 3D designers who want to sell their 3D models, they can receive 80% of the net selling price. For those who want to share their models for free, it is recommended that you select the Creative Commons license.

📌Cults is not exclusive for 3D model designers because makers are also welcome in the site. For makers, you can publish the photos of your 3D printer projects and indicate which 3D printer you use, what were the 3D printing settings and how you did the post-production.

CGTrader

CGTraderCGTrader is one of the leading 3D model marketplaces. It has over 660,000 3D printer files for computer graphics, virtual/augmented reality and gaming.

📌The website has 1,400,000 users that include 3D artists, design studios and businesses who share and sell their models. As a result you can choose from a wide collection of high-quality 3D printer models that you can use in your projects to reduce development time and save resources.

CGTrader offers the talented 3D designers the opportunity to showcase their work. At the same time it gives every 3D printer enthusiast the chance to get valuable feedback from the community, learn from their peers and interact in a designer-friendly environment.

CGTTrader allows customers and designers to directly communicate at each other. The platform also helps professional design studios generate business leads and increase brand awareness.

MyMiniFactory

MyMiniFactoryMyMiniFactor was launched in 2013 and is the leading curated social platform for 3D printable objects with its mission of “empowering creators to share digital objects with 3D printer owners around the world.” They offer 50,000 free and paid 3D printable objects from 10,000 designers worldwide.

If you are looking for 3D printing ideas for beginners or how to make money, you can check the site for ready to download 3D printer models. The designs have been quality tested and are guaranteed to print at any desktop 3D printer.

The site also offers design challenges to 3D artists on a regular basis for 3d print inspiration. Sometimes MyMiniFactory partners with TinkerCAD for this activity. The competition includes design brief, themes, tips and of course, prizes. One challenge even offer the latest Fusion3 F410 3D printer.

📌Joining the website will give you access to thousands of printable 3D printer projects, organize your content and engage with the community to give feedback and get advice.

Yeggi

Yeggi

📌Yeggi is a 3D print model search engine. It works like Google where you can search for 3D printer designs from all of the relevant repositories.

The site allows you to narrow your search results by using the filter. You can filter it by free or commercial models and sort by popularity, best match or latest. It also shows the most popular 3D printer files.

Yeggi rules supreme when it comes to the numbers of 3D printer models that you can search on the site. In fact, it has a over 1.5 million 3D printer designs that are ready to print.

The designs are collected from all 3D communities and marketplace including Thingiverse, GrabCAD and more. The great thing about the site is that 95% are free for download.

Free3D

Free3DThis is the place where most 3D printer enthusiasts share their 3D printer designs to the world.  Skilled artists can build their own portfolio and get freelance work at the site.

Thanks to them, you can get the 3D printer files you need for your projects. The website offers free and premium 3D models with royalty free license.

📌Getting the premium 3D models comes with a list of benefits. It works out of the box. Also, the premium 3D models are available at the best price guarantee with simple returns and commercial license.

Conclusion

There are a lot of websites where you can purchase 3D printable crafts. Thanks to them, you do not need to design your own model. You can just download the 3D printer file for free or by paying a minimum fee.

You will never run out of 3D printer projects ideas if you visit the aforementioned sites. They have the best 3D printing ideas for your next project.

If you want to learn more about 3D printing and 3D printers, you may visit our homepage.

References

www.3ders.org/articles/20160125-the-10-best-sites-to-download-free-stl-files-for-3d-printing.html
www.aniwaa.com/best-sites-download-free-stl-files-3d-models-and-3d-printable-files-3d-printing
www.all3dp.com/1/free-stl-files-3d-printer-models-3d-print-files-stl-download
www.i.materialise.com/blog/en/3d-model-databases