Economics of 3D Printing: 5 Year Financial Model

I was browsing some of the fastest growing industries and the most interesting thing I could find was 3D printing. There are a few main business models that have come up around this. I will be doing models for a few more in the future. For this one, it is: purchasing 3D printers and building things with them that you sell. You may also be interested in a general manufacturing financial model.

$45.00 USD

The template will be immediately available to download after purchase. This is included in the industry-specific financial model bundle and the manufacturing financial models bundle.


3D printer

This model runs for up to 5 years and reports on a monthly and annual basis.

I believe the revenue logic here is elite for strategic planning. The following assumptions drive revenues:
  • 3 main categories of 3D printers with sub-sets of each type (11/12/12)
  • Each type allows the user to define:
    • Purchase count
    • Month of Purchase
    • Cost per Unit
    • Product Category (secondary)
    • Avg. Starting Sellable items per Mo. per 3D Printer
    • Avg. Sales Price
    • Avg. Monthly Compounding Growth rate of unit sales
    • Max Sales Production per Month per 3D Printer
This kind of business involves the hiring of software engineers, talent, sales, and a full executive team (depending on how you want to scale). The idea is that you would find some niche areas where 3D printing fits a need and fill it. 

Some of the main assumption areas involve defining the direct costs per 3D printer type. Things that fit into that category would include supplies per month per printer type and anything else you want to directly attribute to the operation of each 3D printer type.

There are assumptions to account for raising money via debt (traditional bank) as well as from investors and the final source is owners. You can define the share of profits investors get as well as a potential exit value per an exit month.

All relevant logic exists to get down to EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization) as well as EBT (earnings before tax).

In order to get down to EBT, there was dynamic logic built to know the total value of purchases per month and the resulting depreciation expense based on a defined useful life and straight line depreciation.

Outside of that, the logic does flow down to cash before and after equity as well as cumulative cash (this accounts for all items that effect the available cash flow).

There is a DCF (discounted cash flow) analysis as well that shows IRR, ROI, NPV, Equity multiple for the project as well as investors and owners. An executive summary rolls up all of the main results of the annual P&L and cash flow detail.

There are 12 visuals that focus on important areas of the financial forecast.

Break even month/year is included as well (the month/year that equity is covered by cash returns).


More Industry-Specific Bottom-up Financial Models: