13.1 Everyone Becomes an Entrepreneur
I now have a shop. shop.silverjaanus.com sells 3D-printed items for summer chill-out: a cover that keeps wasps away from your drink, a wineglass-shaped holder for a 330ml can, for when you want to feel fancy, and a beer mug for a standard can, keeping your drink cold for longer. Everything is designed by me and printed from PETG filament. It’s the same class of plastic used to make beverage bottles. BPA-free, food-safe, and durable. But since my CAD skills are minimal, all the products and the shop itself were made with AI.
A 3D printer is in itself an amazing invention. A machine that makes things. And when you combine it with AI, you essentially have your own small factory at home, capable of producing 24/7, with the only limits being your own imagination and the physical build area of the device.
Product Design
Every product started with a concept and an idea. For example: what if we tried to make a wineglass-like product you can slide in your beer, soda, or cider can into, which keeps your drink cold longer and looks cool?
I described my vision to the AI, and it wrote an OpenSCAD script that generates the model and gives me a file that I can open in my printer software, review from all sides, check the dimensions, and print as a prototype. First prototypes are never perfect, and when holding the real thing, you see aspects you wouldn’t even think of during the idea phase or when looking at the file – the stem is too big, the can isn’t deep enough inside, the top edge feels a bit too thick in your hand. Then you just have to keep developing the model, print new prototypes, and test them in real-world conditions until you are satisfied with the final result.
Web Development
The shop itself was completed in a single day. A bilingual page, shopping cart, card payments, and parcel lockers from four courier services in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland. The buyer enters their postal code and sees the nearest parcel lockers along with the actual price of their cart.
I tried to build the shop with as little hands-on involvement from myself as possible to see how autonomously Claude could operate. And it could do quite a lot. Registrations have to be done yourself and API keys put in the right places, but my AI handled everything else on its own. The final step was a test purchase of 2.99 euros made with a real card, a confirmation email, and a refund. With that, the shop was open.
What Didn’t Work
The first product was actually a hinged lid for cans. But, at least for now, it proved too complex for the AI. It was actually interesting to watch how it tried to assemble something more complex out of simple objects like cubes and cylinders and spheres, and failed. I gave the AI some images of how a printed door hinge should look like, but the generated file never worked as needed, even with the new Fable 5 model. Some elements were hung in mid-air, and the joints had paper-thin contact points, so they would break off immediately on the physical object. The opening lever of one earlier lid was mechanically flawless but looked like a random stick. The entire design was archived. The machine thinks in code and mathematical coordinates, whereas a human perceives things by touching and looking at them.
Risk
I don’t know if anyone will buy my beer mug. Maybe no one. But since I have my own factory at home, I don’t need to have shelves full of products sitting around. If someone wants a beer mug for Midsummer or wants to protect their drink from bug invasions, the order is ready by the next day and on its way to the parcel locker.
AI does not replace initiative, but it can help with everything else, from generating and developing ideas to execution. You don’t need to hire designers or developers to realize an idea – curiosity, an AI partner, and a willingness to experiment are enough. The barrier to launching your own micro-factory or micro-enterprise has never been lower.