People see the final products — the glowing Minjas, the lifelike pet statues, the topo maps that make grown adults tear up — and they think it all just appears. So today I’m pulling back the curtain on what a real day at PhantomPrints actually looks like, running out of Sewanee, Tennessee on two X1Cs and an H2C.

6:30 AM — Check the Overnight Prints

The printers don’t sleep when I do. I usually kick off 1–2 overnight prints before bed, and the first thing I do every morning (before coffee, which tells you something) is check the screen to see if they finished clean.

Bambu’s remote monitoring app is a lifesaver here. I can literally see a live timelapse of the print from my phone before I even get out of bed. Green status? Let’s go. Error status? Deep breath, coffee first, then diagnosis.

What can go wrong overnight:

Spaghetti (filament detaches and the printer just… keeps going into air)
AMS filament tangle (rare with Bambu, but it happens)
Power blip causing a pause (hence the UPS I installed last spring)

Most mornings everything is fine. But “most mornings” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

7:30 AM — Morning Admin

Once the coffee is doing its job, I handle:

Quote inbox — new quote requests from the form on the website
Order status updates — customers always appreciate a quick “your print started last night, on track for Thursday” message
Social catch-up — checking mentions on X @JonHillTN, Kick notifications, DMs on Instagram
Design queue review — what’s waiting to go into the slicer today?

This phase can be 20 minutes on a light day, 2 hours when there’s a full inbox.

9:00 AM — Design Block

The design block is sacred. This is when I do all modeling and slicing work with no distractions (or at least attempting no distractions).

A typical morning might include:

Finishing a pet statue model from yesterday’s reference photos
Painting a new Minja in Bambu Studio for an AMS print
Tweaking a customer’s topo map based on their revision feedback
Slicing 3–4 jobs and queuing them in priority order

I try to batch design work so printers are never sitting idle waiting on me. The X1Cs can run simultaneously on different jobs. The H2C usually gets the multi-color or larger single jobs.

11:30 AM — Printer Maintenance Check

Every few days, sometimes daily:

Nozzle check — wipe test, look for partial clogs
Build plate clean — IPA wipe, check for texture wear
AMS check — filament levels, any stuck hubs
Bed leveling — the Bambu auto-calibrates but I still verify manually for critical jobs

We’re on the road a lot in this business. Keeping machines happy means fewer surprises on live stream.

1:00 PM — The Stream

This is my favorite part of the day. kick.com/phantomprints goes live and I start printing while talking to the community.

The stream is authentic — no scripted bits, no fake reactions. You’re watching a real production run. If something fails, you see it fail. If something comes out stunning, you see that too.

What we typically do on stream:

Start a new build (always a fan favorite — the first layer reveal)
Check on a current long print mid-progress
Answer questions about 3D printing, the business, life in Sewanee
Show off design work in Bambu Studio or Blender
Occasionally do giveaways for viewers (Minjas are a popular giveaway)

The Sewanee community has been incredibly supportive — people from town, former university students who moved away, and a growing international audience who just found the stream through Kick’s algorithm.

3:30 PM — Print Pulls and Photography

When prints complete during stream or earlier in the day, this is the pull-and-photo block:

Let the bed cool completely (hot-pulling warps edges on some materials)
Remove the flexible build plate, flex it to pop parts free
Remove supports, clean up any surface artifacts
Photograph against a neutral dark background with the LED light setup
Package if ready to ship, or hold for paint/finishing

Photography matters. I want every customer to see their piece look its best. Those photos also feed the website gallery and social content.

5:00 PM — Shipping

USPS Priority pickup or drop-off, depending on volume. We package everything in cardboard with foam padding — I’ve gotten zero damage complaints since switching to a double-box method for anything over 6 inches tall.

Every package gets a tracking number emailed to the customer immediately.

Evening — Queue Overnight Jobs, Community Time

Before I wrap up, I queue overnight prints (the safe, proven jobs that don’t need babysitting), check in on Kick’s community chat, and usually post an update on X and Instagram about what shipped today or what’s printing tonight.

Then I sleep. The printers don’t.

The Part Nobody Tells You About Running a 3D Print Studio

It’s not the printing that takes time. Printing is what the machine does. It’s everything around the printing:

Customer communication
The modeling work
The post-processing
The packaging and shipping logistics
The content creation
The maintenance
The pricing and quoting

I wouldn’t trade it. Every day I get to make something someone is going to love. From Sewanee, Tennessee, with purple filament and too much coffee, that’s what PhantomPrints is built on.

Want to be part of the process? Watch us live on Kick or start your custom order today.