--- title: "From hobby to 400,000 downloads: the story of Mickey from Kit Crafters" url: https://www.voxelmatters.com/from-hobby-to-400000-downloads-the-story-of-mickey-from-kit-crafters/ date: 2026-06-11 modified: 2026-06-11 lang: en author: "Roksana Slusarczyk" description: "Mickey Hoang spent a long time as just an amateur, playing around with 3D design and printing for his own needs. Today he runs the Kit Crafters account on MakerWorld,..." categories: - "3D Modeling" - "Consumer Products" tags: - "future" image: https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-06-09-174322-640x357.png word_count: 708 --- # From hobby to 400,000 downloads: the story of Mickey from Kit Crafters Mickey Hoang spent a long time as just an amateur, playing around with 3D design and printing for his own needs. Today he runs the Kit Crafters account on MakerWorld, where he has published over 200 models downloaded more than 400,000 times in total. The turning point? An X1C his wife gave him as a gift, and his first serious encounter with FreeCAD. His journey with 3D printing goes back to before the pandemic. Mickey was working at a company that made educational games for children, where a need arose for protective cases for micro:bit chips. Nobody at the company knew how to design them. Neither did Mickey, but he volunteered anyway. ![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-06-09-174339-640x423.png) Everything changed when his wife gave him the X1C. Up until then he had been working with an Ender 3 and later an Ender 5. That hardware leap turned designing from a pleasant side activity into something he started investing serious time and energy into. ### The F1 card that started it all. The first step toward his own style was a Formula 1 card model, born from his passion for motorsport. When he uploaded it to MakerWorld, he was not expecting much attention. The card attracted thousands of users, and that response changed his entire approach to design. From that point on, Mickey consistently deepened his knowledge, drawing from simple tutorials available online. Slowly, project by project, he shaped his own style. Worth noting is that throughout this entire journey he stayed loyal to the same tool. FreeCAD, which he used from the very beginning, is still with him today, even though he is now an experienced designer. ![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-06-09-174520-640x425.png) ### A unique style that can't be replicated One of the things that brings Mickey the most joy is the moment someone recognizes his work without any prompting. The best example is his wife, who can scroll through MakerWorld and immediately spot which models came from him. That is no accident. Over the years Mickey has developed a consistent enough aesthetic that his work has its own character, visible at a glance. He has never chased trends. He creates what feels true to him and his interests, which is why you could say he has become something of a trendsetter himself. His main principle is that projects should be printable on as many different printers as possible. That often means letting go of certain details in favor of broader compatibility, but for Mickey that is a deliberate choice, not a compromise. ![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-06-09-174613-640x418.png) ### When a creator and a platform have the same idea When Mickey felt he had built a real community around himself, he decided it was a good moment to organize a remix contest. He reached out to MakerWorld with a fully formed proposal and found that the platform had been thinking along almost identical lines. The contest launched officially under the MakerWorld banner and attracted over 100 entries, which for a first event of its kind was a considerable success. ### The hardest lesson every creator has to learn One of the more difficult things in a designer's life is making peace with the numbers. For a long time Mickey could not understand why projects he had poured the most heart into attracted far less attention than those knocked together quickly and without much effort. Most people want the numbers to reflect the work they put in. In the world of online creators, that is simply not how it works. It took years before Mickey accepted that people just like different things and that cannot be controlled. He says it did not come easily, but once he understood it, he felt a clear sense of relief. ![](https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Zrzut-ekranu-2026-06-09-174627-640x477.png) He takes an equally clear-eyed view of building a business from design work. Blindly chasing trends and spending hours analyzing the algorithm he considers a waste of time. In his view, two things matter above all else: consistency and regular publishing. Those are what attract an audience and build a lasting community. Over 200 models, over 400,000 downloads, and still the same FreeCAD. Mickey has not changed his tool, has not changed his approach, and has not changed the principle he started with: make what genuinely interests you. Turns out, that is enough. *All photos courtesy of [Mickey Hoang](https://makerworld.com/pl/@KitCrafters?ref=blog.bambulab.com) and [BambuLab](https://blog.bambulab.com/how-kit-crafters-turned-toy-design-into-a-living/). All right reserved.*