3 guides
Everything we would tell you on the phone, written down
Three long pieces on the questions that come up before every commercial job: which plastic, how to draw the part, and what any of it costs. Real numbers, real trade-offs, and the places where 3D printing is the wrong answer.
- 017 min readUpdated 9 June 2026
PLA vs PETG: which one do you actually need?
The two filaments that cover about 90% of the work we do, compared on the four things that decide it: heat, sunlight, impact and cost.
What it covers
- Heat resistance: 55 °C against 75 °C
- Brittle failure versus ductile failure
- Outdoors, damp and cleaning chemicals
- A checklist by environment, not by product
- 0211 min readUpdated 30 June 2026
Designing for 3D printing: eleven rules that save money
The design decisions that most often turn a good model into a bad part, and what to change instead.
What it covers
- Wall thickness against nozzle diameter
- The 45° overhang rule and bridging limits
- Why holes print 0.2–0.4 mm undersized
- Clearances, part splitting and clean exports
- 039 min readUpdated 7 July 2026
What does 3D printing cost in the UK in 2026?
A full breakdown of what goes into a printing quote, using the same figures our own calculator runs on.
What it covers
- Filament, electricity and machine wear, costed
- Why labour dominates every small job
- Why handling per plate makes batches cheap
- A worked example: one part against fifty
How these are written
No invented statistics, no borrowed studies
Everything in these guides is either a figure from our own pricing model, a published property of a filament class, or a rule of thumb, and where it is a rule of thumb, it says so. Nothing here cites a study we have not read or a statistic we cannot stand behind.
The cost guide in particular is calculated live from the same constants the instant quote runs on, so it cannot quote a rate the calculator does not use. If we change the labour rate, that page changes with it.
They are also written for the machines we actually run: FDM printers with a 0.4 mm nozzle and a 256 × 256 × 256 mm envelope. Figures like the 45° overhang limit and the 0.2 mm hole allowance are properties of that setup, not universal constants. On a 0.6 mm nozzle or a resin machine most of it would need rewriting.
All three were rewritten for business readers and republished on 24 July 2026. If something here is wrong, or has gone out of date, tell us and we will fix it: the update date at the top of each guide is real.