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We build the hardware and install the system
3D printing
Drop in an STL, OBJ, 3MF or PLY. The model is measured here in your browser and priced against our published rate card, so you get a range in seconds without the file going anywhere. Send it over and we confirm the final price within 12 hours.
How it usually goes
Next working day
You email the file. Someone opens it, slices it and replies — often within a day, which is quick for work done by hand.
Your file is now on their computer.
How it goes here
Seconds
You drop the file in below. It is measured in this tab and priced while you watch. Change the material, the quality or the quantity and the price follows.
Your file stays on your computer.
The rate card stays on our server and is never sent to your browser. That is why the measuring happens here and the pricing happens there.
Quote a part
Load a model, or answer a few questions without one. The price covers material, machine time, the hands-on work and the waste from any colour change.
Simple mode
Have a file? Drop it here.
Optional. STL, 3MF, OBJ or PLY, checked on your device and not uploaded.
Answer the first two and a price appears. Nothing is sent until you choose to.
Answer the questions above
Print quality
A part is built as a stack of layers. Thinner layers give a smoother surface and take longer to print, which is why quality is a price control rather than a preference.
Thinner layers use no more plastic — the part is the same size either way. They cost more because there are more of them, and each layer adds its own Z move and cooling.
The finest layers, run slowly for the cleanest surface. Right for lettering, threads and small parts where the surface is the part.
Where to start, and what nearly every working part wants. Layer lines show close up and disappear in a bracket behind a panel.
The thickest layers, run quickly — the cheapest of the three. Layer lines you can feel with a thumbnail.
A resin layer is exposed all at once, so the print time depends on how many layers there are and not on how much resin is in each. Halve the layer height and the print takes twice as long.
Multi-colour
Every colour after the first is changed mid-print: the old filament is pushed out and dropped in the bin, about 0.55 g a time, and each change takes around 55 seconds. On a tall part that adds up to more plastic than the part itself.
A change happens on every layer where two colours meet — on a real part about a third of the layers it could be, because colour is regional and the slicer carries the last colour of one layer into the next.
The calculator shows the waste on its own line beside the part weight rather than folding it into one figure. Forty grams of part and 144 g of waste is the truth; a single blended number looks like a broken measurement, and somebody who cannot see where a charge came from concludes the calculator is wrong rather than that colour is expensive.
The control goes up to twenty-four colours, as many as chained changers reach, and it is priced the same way all the way up — so a high count is expensive rather than refused.
There are cheaper ways to get colour, and we suggest them before quoting the expensive one: print the parts separately in single colours and assemble them, or change colour once at a chosen height — one change for the whole print.
Worked out with the same functions the calculator prices with, so this example and your quote cannot disagree.
More filament is thrown away than ends up in the part — 3.6× as much. One colour is dramatically cheaper if the part does not need two.
Materials
Read from the workshop's own catalogue, so it is what we print in rather than what a brochure once said. Choosing between PETG and PA-CF is really deciding whether the part has to survive heat or load.
Stiff, accurate, inexpensive and made in the widest range of colours. Most parts belong here, where the decision is about how the part looks and where it will live.
Filament
Tougher and more impact-resistant than standard PLA, with the widest colour range.
13 colours
Filament
Smooth, non-reflective matte finish that hides layer lines. Clean, professional look for display and functional parts.
9 colours
Filament
Tougher than PLA and handles heat and damp. The sensible default for anything that lives outdoors or gets handled.
4 colours
Filament
Heat resistant and machinable — it can be drilled, tapped and glued with solvent.
2 colours
Filament
ABS that does not go chalky in sunlight. The choice for an outdoor enclosure.
2 colours
Filament · Flexible
Flexible and hard-wearing. Gaskets, bumpers, strain reliefs, phone cases. Prints slowly, which is reflected in the price.
2 colours
Filament
Stone-look speckle straight off the printer. Prints like PLA; the finish is the point.
1 colour
Filament
High-gloss metallic sheen. Shows layer lines more than matte does, so it suits display pieces over functional parts.
1 colour
Filament
Translucent rather than glass-clear — light passes, detail does not. Good for diffusers and light pipes.
1 colour
Resin
Fine detail and a smooth surface an FDM nozzle cannot reach. Brittle, and it degrades in sunlight.
2 colours
Resin
Resin detail with enough toughness to be handled and fitted.
1 colour
Several times the price of PLA and harder to print. Worth it when the part has to survive something — heat, load, fatigue or friction. The colours are whatever the property comes in, usually black.
Filament
Tough, low friction and fatigue resistant — living hinges, gears, snap fits. Absorbs moisture, so it is dried before printing.
2 colours
Filament
Nylon with chopped carbon fibre: stiff, dimensionally stable and light. For jigs, fixtures and brackets that must not flex.
1 colour
Filament · Flexible
Softer and stretchier than TPU — closer to rubber. For seals and grips where 95A is too stiff.
1 colour
Want something that is not listed? Send the part over. Most engineering filaments run on the same machine, and the question is whether the material suits what the part has to do.
3D modelling & CAD design
A sketch on paper, a part that snapped, a hole that needs a bracket, or a handful of measurements. Any of those is enough to start: we draw the part, and you own the files at the end of it.
Any one of these is enough to start a conversation. All of them is enough to start drawing.
A model you own, in formats that outlive us — not a print you have to come back to one supplier for.
How it is priced
A mounting bracket from three dimensions is usually an hour. Reverse-engineering a curved housing from photographs is another job entirely, and no arithmetic performed on a photograph can tell the two apart — which is why the calculator does not try. We quote drawing as a figure of its own once we have seen what you send, agree it before anything starts, and show it on its own line.
Send a sketch, a photo or the numbers. We reply with a fixed price for the drawing before any work starts.
How the number is made
Three stages, in two different places, for one reason each.
It is read in this tab. Size, volume and surface area come out of the geometry itself, small gaps are filled, and parts that overlap or touch get an estimated weight instead.
Size, volume, gaps filled
Walls, infill and supports are modelled from the shape and your settings, then converted to grams at the material's own density. Time is the rougher of the two.
Grams and minutes, each
Grams, minutes and a quantity go to our server. It holds the rate card, costs the job and sends back a range.
A price range, in your currency
Limits
A calculator that hides its assumptions is not quicker to use, only harder to argue with. Each of these moves the number.
Print time is an estimate, and can be 30–40% out until we slice the file.
Parts that overlap or touch get a guessed weight, which can be far off. Type the weight if you know it.
The estimate assumes the part is printed as modelled, in one piece, in one orientation.
A model carries no tolerances, no threads that have to fit and no surface finish.
Sizes are read as millimetres. A model exported in inches measures 25.4 times too small.
Anything larger than the printer has no single-part price. We can usually split it.
Colour-change waste is charged at 0.55 g a change, on about a third of the changes a part could make.
Drawing a model is not in any of this. The calculator prices printing; design time is quoted by a person.
Questions
If yours is not here, the workshop would rather answer it than have you guess.
No model yet, an assembly rather than a part, more colours than the changer holds, or something the calculator refused — that is a conversation rather than a form. Tell us what the part has to do and we will tell you whether printing it is the right answer.