Designer's FAQ

Things and Thingiverse Apps

• How do I remove my Thing from use with an App ?
• How do I opt out of an App?
• How does my license affect app usage?
• I have a design, but there are now 50 remixes because users have used an app to edit/customize my design, what's up with that?

  Designer Tips

• What are Designer Tips?
• How do I receive tips?
• What about customized things? Who gets the tip if someone purchases a Thing that is the product of a customizable Thing?
• Is there a way to make only one of your Things require a tip, but not all of them?
• Is Thingiverse making money off my designs?
• If a user tips me $1 do I get the full $1 tip?
• What's the rationale for tip amounts being in fixed values? ($1, $3, $5, $8, $13, $21)
• Why is the minimum tip amount for user-to-user tipping set to $3?
• How do I know if someone tips me?
• Why are my tips paid out monthly?
• Why was the tip amount I was paid out less than the actual tip I was tipped?
• How do I export my tip transactions for accounting or other purposes?
• Am I responsible for taxes on tips?
• For Thingiverse Apps tipping, the tip I recieve is sometimes lower than the mandatory tip amount I requested, why does that happen?
• Someone stole my design and is making tips off of it. What can I do / How do I report it?
  
  

  Things and Thingiverse Apps

  How do I remove my Thing from use with an App ?

  Thingiverse is a community of makers, hobbyists, educators, professionals, and many others who all have a passion for turning digital designs into real life objects via 3D printing and other methods! Thingiverse allows its community members to upload, share, and discuss digital designs and projects.
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  How do I opt out of an App?

  Things are digital designs/files and instructions that can be turned into a real life physical object.
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  How does my license affect app usage?

  Collections operate like folders and allow users to save Things they might be interested in for future use and organize them into different collections.
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  I have a design, but there are now 50 remixes because users have used an app to edit/customize my design, what's up with that?

  Remixes are digital designs that have been "remixed", or modified in some way, from an original digital design. Users are free to remix other user's digital designs as long as the license on the original design allows for derivatives.
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  Designer Tips

  What are Designer Tips?

  Designers can now receive money for their work via 2 different methods: Thingiverse Apps or User-to-User Tipping. Since Thingiverse Apps now allow payment for services, we ensured designers could receive a share of revenue when their design is used in a purchase. To do this, we've introduced designer payments where designers can receive a payment when their Thing is used in a purchase. These payments can be setup as either a mandatory payment or optional tip, which would let the customer leave a tip if they choose to. Users can also tip each other directly with User-to-User Tipping. User-to-User Tipping is optional and cannot be made mandatory. We at Thingiverse believe that 3D designs should always be available to download for free, and therefore User-to-User tipping will always be optional. 100% of designer payments will always go to the designer, minus transaction fees, if applicable (see question below for more details).
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  How do I receive tips?

  You will need to link your PayPal account to your Thingiverse Account (available in your Users Settings under "App Settings"). You will receive payment via PayPal at the beginning of each month for the previous month's earnings.
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  What about customized things? Who gets the tip if someone purchases a Thing that is the product of a customizable Thing?

  We believe the majority of the work and creativity of a customized Thing comes from the creator of the customizable Thing itself. Therefore, customized Things are considered an extension of the original customizable Thing, and any tips earned in a commercial transaction will go to the creator of the original customizable Thing.
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  Is there a way to make only one of your Things require a tip, but not all of them?

  No. Currently, requiring a tip applies to all designs on your user account
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  Is Thingiverse making money off my designs?

  All tips go to designers. For Thingiverse Apps purchases, Thingiverse charges the developers a fee, but it is only subtracted from the developer's earnings, not from the designer's percentage.
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  If a user tips me $1, do I get the full $1 tip?

  It depends on how you received the tip. Yes, you will receive the full $1 tip if the tip is received during a Thingiverse App purchase since the developer of the app is responsible for payment processing fees. If the tip is a User-to-User Tip, you will receive the $1 minus payment processing fees, which unfortunately, can be substantial, especially for small amounts PayPal charges 2.9%+$0.30 per transaction. We are currently in the process of trying to lower the fees by working with Paypal or others to use a new type of payment method and we'll announce more information once available.
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  What's the rationale for tip amounts being in fixed values? ($1, $3, $5, $8, $13, $21)

  It's the fibonacci sequence :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number
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  Why is the minimum tip amount for user-to-user tipping set to $3?

  Payment processing companies like to charge big fees. We determined that the minimum tip amount that gave as much money to the user, without losing an unreasonable amount to fees, was $3. For Thing Apps purchases, the total purchase amount is typically far higher than $3, so the restriction does not apply.
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  How do I know if someone tips me?

  You'll receive a notification via your Thingiverse Dashboard, as well as receive an email notification.
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  Why are my tips paid out monthly?

  Payment processing companies like to charge big fees. These fees occur every time a transaction occurs and we found that collecting tips and holding them until the end of the month led to the least amount of fees for you. Additionally, app purchases have a 30 day refund window where if an order is refunded, the tip received on that order is refunded as well. Due to this, Thingiverse has to keep the tip amount for the 30 day period in case of refunds.
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  Why was the tip amount I was paid out less than the actual amount I was tipped?

  Payment processing companies like to charge big fees that are not friendly for small amounts. We tried very hard to minimize these fees but they can still take a sizable portion of a tip amount, especially if the total tip amount you received in the past month was very low.
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  How do I export my tip transactions for accounting or other purposes?

  We are building this functionality at the moment. You will soon be able to export a CSV file containing your tip transactions by navigating to your Earning History on your Order History page and clicking "Export to CSV".
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  Am I responsible for taxes on tips?

  Yes, if you receive income from tips on your designs, you are responsible for any taxes incurred.
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  For Thingiverse Apps tipping, the tip I recieve is sometimes lower than the mandatory tip amount I requested, why does that happen?

  Because app developers are responsible for payment processing fees which take a percentage of the payment amount, if a tip amount is much larger than the order amount during a purchase, the developer might lose money when taking transaction fees into account. To ensure developer's don't ever lose money on a transaction, we dynamically cap tips based upon the total order amount.
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  Someone stole my design and is making tips off of it. What can I do / How do I report it?

  On the Thing Page in question, report the Thing using the "Report Thing" button on the Thing's page. Our Community Manager will follow up and take it down and we will investigate any withholding of payments.
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Why does Thingiverse allow the same old people to “report” good designs?
These people make it a point to keep harassing good designers.
Case in point; there are plenty of 2nd Amendment Signs/ Gun Signs/ and actual Toy Guns on Thingiverse.
So, why is my 2A Flag design suddenly flagged? (See picture)
It is beyond obvious that someone is banning my designs just to harass me -if not, then why are there so many other guns/gun signs NOT flagged?

~Todd
StarLabs3D

Hey, this is Mari from the Thingiverse Team.

Here's a list of some of the fixes we released earlier today.

• Improved download analytics. We found the issue with incorrectly displaying the number of downloads on your thing. Unfortunately, this does not bring back download numbers from the past months
• Some Things could not be downloaded as a zip, this should now be restored
• We improved how you can edit collections and increased the number of visible collections when adding a thing to a collection.

Find the complete list with changes here.

If you still find things that should be fixed, or things that can be better, please let us know.

Hi, this is Mari from the new Thingiverse Team,

Thanks for the sweet responses on our last updates. We've been working hard to enhance your Thingiverse experience, and we're excited to bring you more updates more often.

Here's a list of some of the updates we've released today:

• Partially modernized pages related to groups
• Fixed 'Show customized creations' filter
• Implemented lazy-loading for most images

Also, if you stopped using the Customizer because your models were stuck in a queue forever. This has been resolved, so if you've been waiting, feel free to give your favorite model another try. If you have models that are still in the queue from before the fix, they cannot be processed. You can redo them or use this workaround to still generate them.

Find the complete list with changes here.

We hope you'll notice an improvement with these new changes and that they'll make your experience more enjoyable. If you have any questions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you.

Hey, this is Mari from the Thingiverse Team,

We've had a busy week last week with multiple releases.
If we break something we fix it as soon as we can.

Here's a list of some of the updates we've released this week.

• Missing designs, like the Benchy or your most recent thing, can be found again
• Zip files now contain 2 text files and the models that you are trying to download

Find the complete list with changes here.

We expect our next update to be in 2023 since we will also be enjoying some time off for the holidays.
If you still find things that are broken, or things that can be improved, you are welcome to leave a comment.

Happy Holidays!

Has anybody got a flsun Q5 printer or can tell me what the hell is going on with my printer am about ready to chuck it in a bin .

So was printing a Spiderman bust and left it overnight and when I got up in the morning the print had failed looked like it had run out of pla (it hadn't).

So I checked to see if was stuck on the roll as it's cheap pla and last roll had twisted itself several times also not the case.

So I heated the hotend to take the pla out for it not to move it ended up snapping in hotend anyway I got it out and tried to reprint the bust in a different colour and for better pla but nothing was coming out the extura not matter what I did so took the nozzle off and tried to clean it a little as I don't have any new one's and was given the printer by my brother in law so can't afford to buy one.

Pulled some leftover pla out that was in one end put back on printer and still nothing so took nozzle off again took the PTFE tube out of the printer that had some leftover pla in one end so removed that and checked that the fillment was passing through the tube and the hotend to see if was one of them no.

So put the printer back together and just tried to print a test but still nothing coming out of nozzle so I knew it had to be the nozzle so I got a needle and heated the needle and stuck it up the nozzle (wow) it was like a volcano had just gone off so I thought great IV done it I run some pla through it to make sure and was coming out no worries but noticed it felt very rough.

So IV leveled the the printer and started to print a test and now it's like it's printing a net (see photo) I have rereleveled and still the same what am I doing wrong as no matter how low or high the nozzle is to the print bed.

Can anyone help me sorry for the long story but felt I needed to explain why I had done what I had done also still don't know exactly what happened for the print to fail. Tia

Hello,
I have had this a few times, I download and slice, either using Cura or prusaslicer, I print and find some parts are missing
This afternoon, I printed a helicopter, it had all the supports in place, but when removed, the fuselage was missing
I ask please, is there anyway I can check the stl file ?
Thanks in advance

I've noticed a lot of iterations of the same design being posted on the same day and continuing day after day. When you scroll thru the "Newest" files you see the same design but with different names or text for example. I think that limiting the number of designs someone can post in a 24 hour period would improve the site both for the viewer and for the data base system. If you want to post name tags for example...post a editable file that the user can change the name and print your item don't keep posting the same file with every name you can think of. That's just my opinion and something I'd like to see.

Hi! Since roughly a month one of my published things became invisible to public (only visible for me in my account).
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5504470
I though it’s a bug, but now there is given a notice “This Thing was reported as in violation of our Terms of Service therefore it is under moderation.”. It’s great to see the reason for hiding my design, but unfortunately there is no further information given, what is claimed to be wrong. There is nothing special with this design.
What can I do?
Can anyone hide other designs just by reporting?