{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "NewsArticle",
    "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/cruisecup-3d-printing-business-808000-revenue/#article",
    "mainEntityOfPage": "https://badiyaa.com/cruisecup-3d-printing-business-808000-revenue/",
    "headline": "New York teen’s 3D-printed can cooler business grossed $808,000 in 2025 on a fleet of 160 printers",
    "description": "Mike Satterlee, 19, started with one $500 printer in 2022. He says he pays himself $500 to $1,500 a month and puts the rest back into the business.",
    "datePublished": "2026-10-15T18:25:00+01:00",
    "dateModified": "2026-10-16T15:05:02+01:00",
    "author": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "name": "Badiyaa Editorial Desk",
        "url": "https://badiyaa.com/author/editorial-desk/"
    },
    "publisher": {
        "@type": "NewsMediaOrganization",
        "@id": "https://badiyaa.com/#organization",
        "name": "Badiyaa",
        "url": "https://badiyaa.com/",
        "logo": {
            "@type": "ImageObject",
            "url": "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/badiyaa-logo-color-600x60-1.png",
            "width": 600,
            "height": 60
        },
        "email": "badiyaavideo@gmail.com",
        "publishingPrinciples": "https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/",
        "correctionsPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/corrections/",
        "actionableFeedbackPolicy": "https://badiyaa.com/contact/",
        "ownershipFundingInfo": "https://badiyaa.com/about/#ownership",
        "sameAs": [
            "https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61595518283625",
            "https://www.instagram.com/badiyaa.com.ai/",
            "https://www.threads.net/@badiyaa.com.ai"
        ],
        "parentOrganization": {
            "@type": "Organization",
            "name": "Rezilient Digital",
            "url": "https://www.rezilientdigital.com/",
            "address": {
                "@type": "PostalAddress",
                "streetAddress": "Fl No 3, Nav Shyam Sadan, Plot No 38, Pestom Sagar, Chembur",
                "addressLocality": "Mumbai",
                "addressRegion": "Maharashtra",
                "postalCode": "400089",
                "addressCountry": "IN"
            },
            "sameAs": [
                "https://www.linkedin.com/company/rezilientdigital"
            ]
        }
    },
    "isAccessibleForFree": true,
    "inLanguage": "en-US",
    "wordCount": 768,
    "image": [
        "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/3D_printer_farm_at_Hackerspace_Wroc_aw.webp",
        "https://badiyaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/3D_printer_farm_at_Hackerspace_Wroc_aw-1024x768.webp"
    ],
    "articleSection": "Tech",
    "keywords": "3D printing, CruiseCup, Fused filament fabrication, Small business",
    "articleBody": "CruiseCup, a drinkware brand run by 19-year-old Mike Satterlee from Clifton Park, New York, took in $808,000 in gross revenue in 2025 from its website and TikTok Shop, with Amazon sales on top, according to company documents described in reporting this week. The business started with one desktop 3D printer that he bought for about $500 in September 2022, paid for with birthday and Christmas money. It now runs 160 of them. The product that made the year was a can cooler holding two 12-ounce cans, which he calls the tactical reloader. A fresh can goes in at one end and the empty one comes out of the other. Satterlee promoted it on Instagram in August 2025, orders arrived by the hundreds in a single day, and that month alone brought in roughly $100,000. How a desktop printer turns plastic into a product The machines in Satterlee’s warehouse use fused filament fabrication, or FFF, the most common type of hobby 3D printer. A thin strand of thermoplastic, usually PLA or PETG, is pulled off a spool and pushed into a heated nozzle between 0.3 and 1.0 millimeters wide. The melted plastic is laid down as a fine bead, one flat layer at a time, following instructions that slicing software generates from a 3D design file. When a layer is done, the bed drops slightly and the next one begins. Two things make this a viable small-business tool. The core patent on the process expired in 2009, which opened the way for a whole industry of cheap machines and is credited with a price fall of roughly a hundredfold. And a printer needs no molds: changing the product means changing a file, so a teenager can test a design in the evening and sell it the next week. The trade-off is speed. Each object is built layer by layer, which is why a sudden spike in orders becomes a queue. That is what happened in August 2025. With 60 printers at the time, Satterlee estimated it would take about six weeks to work through the orders. Today CruiseCup also buys stainless steel versions from a manufacturer in China rather than printing everything in-house. The business math, with the working shown Gross revenue is money in before costs, so it says little about what the owner keeps. Using only figures Satterlee has disclosed: Average month: $808,000 divided by 12 is about $67,300. The August spike of roughly $100,000 was about 12% of the whole year ($100,000 divided by $808,000). Owner pay: he says he takes home $500 to $1,500 a month. Over 12 months that is $6,000 to $18,000, or about 0.7% to 2.2% of 2025 gross revenue. Rent: his 3,000-square-foot warehouse costs $3,600 a month, or $43,200 a year, roughly 5.3% of 2025 gross. Revenue per machine: spread across today’s 160 printers, $808,000 works out to about $5,050 each. That overstates what printers alone earn, because part of the range is bought-in steel and the fleet was smaller for much of 2025. Most of the rest, Satterlee says, goes back into more printers, advertising and product development. He has not disclosed a profit figure, so the true margin is unknown. The documented total also puts earlier claims in perspective. Profiles of Satterlee published in late 2025 and early 2026 described the business as bringing in around $300,000 a month, or $315,000 in a single month. At $300,000 every month, a year would come to $3.6 million, about 4.5 times what the 2025 documents show. One way to square the two is that a single exceptional month was read as a run rate. Why most print farms stay small Satterlee did not start with CruiseCup. In June 2023 he launched SoleFully, which printed decorative charms for Crocs and took an estimated $250,000 in sales in 2024, enough to move out of his parents’ basement. He noticed that car cupholder adapters drew more interest online and carried better margins than shoe charms, and he closed SoleFully in June 2025. That pattern, several products tried and dropped, is the part most people skip. Kerry Stevenson, who has written about 3D printing since 2007, argued after the earlier profiles that the printing is “the easiest step” and that finding a product people will actually buy is where would-be makers fail. His example: 150 printed widgets a day at $20 each comes to $21,000 a week on paper, but only if those buyers exist and can find you. The wider market is growing. Shopify says sales of 3D-printed products on its platform rose 112% between October 2025 and September 2026. Satterlee now runs CruiseCup full time with one employee, and his next steps are UV printing, a larger drinkware range and, he hopes, space on retail shelves. Further reading Wikipedia: Fused filament fabrication Wikipedia: Michael Satterlee Image: Majabojarska, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
    "markdown": "https://badiyaa.com/cruisecup-3d-printing-business-808000-revenue.md"
}