I kept getting deleted. So I built my own community.

I kept getting deleted. So I built my own community. Every time I tried to bring up FixMyPrint in a 3D printing subreddit it got removed. Sometimes with a warning. Sometimes just gone, no explanation. The main subs have strict self-promotion rules and they apply them broadly enough that a solo founder trying to get genuine feedback on something they built has basically nowhere to go. I get why those rules exist. Nobody wants their community turned into an ad board. But there's a difference between someone spamming affiliate links and someone who built a tool and wants to know if it actually helps people. That difference does not get a lot of grace on large subreddits. So I stopped trying to fit into spaces that weren't built for what I was doing and built one that was. r/3DPrintingTools launched about four months ago. The idea was simple: a community where founders, makers, developers, and hobbyists could openly share tools, apps, browser extensions, and anything else built to improve the 3D printing experience. Whether you built it yourself or just found something useful online, you could post it without worrying about getting deleted. It grew faster than I expected. The community is sitting at 2,300 members now with around 2,500 daily visits. About 100 different tools and apps have been posted. On a typical day three to five new ones show up. Some are big projects, some are small scripts someone wrote to solve their own problem and decided to share. All of it is welcome. What surprised me most is how many people were in the same position I was in. Lone developers, hobbyists who built something useful, small teams who made a tool and had no good place to share it. The frustration was common. The lack of a place to land was common. The community filled a gap that I did not realize was this large until people started showing up to fill it. If you build things for 3D printing or you find tools that make the hobby better, r/3DPrintingTools is the place for it. No deletion, no warnings, no gatekeeping. Just people sharing what works. reddit.com/r/3DPrintingTools