Physical products, production, and the irresistible urge to automate the boring parts.
The simple version
That was not the original business plan. It is, however, a surprisingly accurate summary.
Projects
Design it online. Preview it on your wall. We make it. You install it.
No design calls. No 14-email approval chain. No file named FINAL_final_v8.pdf.
Small manufactured products, personalized gifts, and experiments that somehow escaped into Etsy.
Some became products. Some became filament.
Etsy link will be connected before launch ↗
ESP32, Arduino, tiny displays, sensors, code, and a very simple rule:
If I have to do the same thing fifty times, eventually a machine is going to do it.
Whether the machine agreed to this arrangement is unclear.
Behind Chumakers
I studied physics and astronomy. Not because it sounded impressive, but because I had been trying to understand how things worked long before I knew there was a degree for that.
As a kid, before I knew who Einstein was, I was already building little pulley cranes because lifting toys by hand seemed unnecessarily inefficient.
Design, lenticular work, wide-format printing, different print shops, real deadlines, real machines, and the occasional moment when a printer chooses violence five minutes before delivery.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion, I moved to the United States. My technical background quickly pulled me into communications and server-room work.
It was supposed to be a hobby. Then there was a second printer. Then products. Then packaging. Then inventory. The hobby had clearly misunderstood the assignment.
A small shop turned into repeatable making: printing, finishing, packing, shipping, testing what people actually buy, and learning that “creative freedom” has a surprising amount of bubble wrap in it.
3D printing is staying. The goal now is to move it to a more serious business level: customer configurators, automatic order flow, production scheduling, status updates, and eventually agents that deal with the repetitive parts.
The moment it got real
The Willow project connected a lot of the dots: production, lettering, installation, NFC details, and the realization that the ordering process itself could be redesigned.
Naturally, this created another project.
Currently building
Live preview + automated order flow.
Orders, production, customer status.
Waiting patiently for the database to behave first.
The part where I stop building things
When I am not making something, I am usually trying to get closer to nature. I can spend hours looking at constellations and consider that a completely reasonable use of time.
Machines are great.
Trees require significantly fewer firmware updates.
