Material
The mass the print file uses: the part, its supports, and the purge when the machine changes material.
How pricing works
How a price is put together.
Not a rate sheet — the rates stay ours. This is the method: who decides how your part is printed, what goes into the number, and why a batch is cheaper per part.
The method
A person prepares it. The print file prices it.
First, someone who prints for a living prepares your model: orientation, walls, infill, supports, layer height — chosen for what the part has to do. Then the exact print file is measured: the grams of each material and the hours of machine time. Those measurements, and the time your part takes by hand, make the price.
The components
Four costs, measured separately.
Machine time
The hours the printer is occupied, covering its depreciation and the parts it wears through.
Energy
The printer’s draw for the length of the job.
Labour
Preparing and clearing the plate, removing support, checking and packing.
They are added up and our margin is applied. You see one total, and that is what you pay — we do not charge VAT.
Quantity
Why ten costs less than ten times one.
Setting up a job — loading the filament, preparing the plate, starting and clearing it — is paid once per build plate, not once per part. So the question that drives a batch price is how many of your parts fit on a plate together.
That depends on the size of your part against the size of the chamber, which is why the saving is real arithmetic rather than a volume discount we decide to offer. Two hundred small brackets share a handful of setups. Two hundred large housings do not, and we would rather explain that than pretend otherwise.
What changes with quantity
- Material scales with the number of parts
- Machine time scales with the number of parts
- Setup scales with the number of plates
- Packing and shipping are per consignment
Which is why the per-part price falls as the run grows, and then flattens once setup stops being the dominant cost.
By tier
Why the tiers differ.
The filament price is the obvious difference and the least interesting one. What actually separates the tiers is how much human attention a job needs, and how expensive a failure is when it happens.
Prototyping
The cheapest work we do, and cheap for structural reasons rather than as a loss-leader.
Keeps the price down
- Feeds automatically from the AMS, so a job can run unattended
- Soluble support dissolves — no hand finishing time
- Prints fast and hot-swaps between colours without a plate change
- Forgiving materials: a job needs less setup care and attention
Engineering
A step up, and the step is mostly labour rather than filament.
Pushes the price up
- Support is breakaway and removed by hand — real minutes per part
- Several grades must be dried before and during printing
- Reinforced grades are abrasive and wear the nozzle faster
- Warping risk means more care at setup, and occasionally a rerun
Keeps the price down
- Still AMS-fed in most cases, so the job runs without an operator present
High performance
The most expensive tier, and the one where the price is least about the plastic.
Pushes the price up
- No automatic feed: one spool at a time, with an operator on hand
- Mandatory high-temperature drying before and during the job
- Slow prints in a chamber that has to reach and hold temperature
- Hard, abrasive fibre content — highest wear on nozzles and plates
- Support removal on a stiff, high-temperature part is slow and careful work
The demanding materials carry an allowance. Engineering and high-temperature grades need more care at every step and fail more often, so their price includes a small allowance for it. When a print does fail, the reprint is still on us.
What you can rely on
Three things we will not do.
One price for the whole order.
Nothing added at the end. Shipping is paid to the courier, so you see what the parts cost and what the delivery costs.
The price you accept is the price you pay.
A quote is valid for 14 days. Accept it within that time and that is the price — the file is already prepared.
Failed prints are our cost.
If a print fails on our machines, we run it again at our expense.
Why the rates themselves are not on this page
Our rates and margin are the commercial basis of the business, so like most businesses we keep them private. What we can show is the method above, and a person who can explain your quote if you ask.
Very small orders are charged a minimum order value, because below a certain size handling a job costs more than it earns. If it applies, your quote says so plainly.
Scanning works the same way: the method is public — per-job quotes, agreed before work starts — and the rates live in your quote.
Ask us if you need a rate breakdown for a supplier questionnaire or a framework agreement — that is a reasonable request under an NDA, and a different thing from posting it publicly.