Pricing
Every line of the price, and where each one comes from
We publish the cost model rather than a price list, because a printed part has no list price. It has a volume, a print time and a plate count. These are the rates every 3D printing job leaving our Folkestone workshop is costed at, whether the parts go to a business in Kent or into the post.
- Minimum order
- £30
- Labour
- £24/h
- Design and CAD
- £42/h
- VAT
- None charged
The build-up
Seven costs, a margin, then two multipliers
A quote is assembled from what the job genuinely consumes, then a single margin is added on top. There is no hidden material mark-up and no rate that appears only on certain jobs.
What the job consumes
Filament is charged by the gram at the price we pay for the spool, plus 4% for the purge and prime line the machine lays down before your part. A PETG HF spool at £16.00/kg is quoted at £16.00/kg.
Electricity is metered at £0.2489 per kWh and includes the heat-up before the first layer, which is a surprisingly large share of a short print.
Machine time and wear covers the printer paying for itself over its working life plus nozzles, belts, plates and lubricant. It is a few pence an hour, and it is in there because pretending machines are free is how a workshop ends up unable to replace one.
Consumables are £0.10 a part for plate wear, glue and IPA, plus £0.35 once per order for the box, the padding and the invoice.
Failure allowance is 6% of the filament, electricity and machine time. Prints fail. Spreading that across every job is honest; billing you for our reprint would not be.
What we add
Labour at £24.00 an hour, counted in three separate places rather than as a flat charge per part. That distinction is the whole reason batch work is affordable here, and it gets its own section below.
Margin is 35% of the subtotal. One rate, applied to every job, whatever the material and whoever is asking.
The batch multiplier then steps the whole figure down as the quantity rises, and the turnaround multiplier steps it up if you need the parts sooner than the standard queue allows. Both are applied to the total, not to individual lines.
Finally the price is floored at £30 and rounded up to the nearest £0.50. No VAT: we're not VAT registered. The number you are quoted is the number on the invoice.
The important bit
Labour is charged per plate, not per part
You do not pull fifty parts off a build plate one at a time. You pull one plate. Counting the handling time per part is the single most common way a printing quote gets a batch badly wrong, and it is why quotes for repeat work so often come back uncompetitive.
How many parts fit on a plate
The plate is 246mm square once the margins are taken off. We divide that area by your part’s footprint, its bounding box in X and Y: with 25% added for the skirt and the gap between parts, and cap the result at 64 pieces so the estimate never assumes a nesting job nobody would actually do.
That number decides how many times someone walks to the machine, which is most of what a batch really costs. A 40 mm clip nests dozens to a plate and fifty of them is one plate change. A 200 mm housing is one per plate, and fifty of them is fifty.
It is also why footprint matters more than volume for batch pricing. Two parts using identical plastic can differ by a factor of ten on labour if one lies flat and wide and the other stands tall and narrow. If a batch price looks high, ask about reorienting the part. It is often the cheapest change available.
The same clip, four quantities
Cable clip, PETG, 40 × 22 × 14 mm, standard finish, standard turnaround. Only the quantity changes.
| Qty | Plates | Labour | Total | Per unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 18 min | £30.00 | £30.00 |
| 10 | 1 | 39 min | £30.00 | £3.00 |
| 50 | 1 | 131 min | £81.00 | £1.62 |
| 200 | 4 | 494 min | £299.50 | £1.50 |
One clip costs the £30 minimum on its own, because a single piece carries the whole set-up. Two hundred come out at £1.50 each on average. Nothing was discounted to get there: the work simply divides.
Worked example
Fifty cable clips, line by line
Cable clip, PETG, 40 × 22 × 14 mm. 55 fit on one plate, so the whole run is 1 plate of machine time and one trip to clear it.
| Line | Where it comes from | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Filament | 197 g of PETG HF at £16.00/kg, including 4% for the purge and prime line | £3.28 |
| Electricity | 1.50 kWh at £0.2489/kWh, heat-up included | £0.37 |
| Machine time and wear | 7 h 54 m on the Bambu Lab A1 at £0.15/h of capital and maintenance | £1.16 |
| Consumables, per part | Plate wear, glue and IPA: £0.10 × 50 | £5.00 |
| Labour | 131 min at £24.00/h: 10 min setting the job up, 6 min across 1 plate, 40 min checking 50 parts, 75 min on the standard finish | £52.40 |
| Packaging and paperwork | Box, padding and the invoice, once per order | £0.35 |
| Failure allowance | 6% of filament, electricity and machine time: prints do fail | £0.29 |
| Subtotal | What the job costs us to do | £62.85 |
| Margin | 35% of the subtotal | £22.00 |
| Batch multiplier | 50 units puts this job in the 50–199 tier | × 0.95 |
| Turnaround multiplier | Standard, 5–7 working days | × 1.00 |
| Total | Rounded up to the nearest £0.50. No VAT: we're not VAT registered. | £81.00 |
What would change this figure
- A taller part adds layers, and layers are time. Halving the layer height roughly doubles the machine hours.
- A wider footprint means fewer per plate, more plate changes and more labour on the same quantity.
- A sanded or smoothed finish adds 12 min to 35 min of bench work per part, which on a batch outweighs everything else combined.
- Carbon-filled filament costs roughly twice PETG per kilogram, though on a small part the plastic is rarely the biggest line.
Quantity, speed and finish
The three multipliers, published in full
These are applied mechanically by the calculator. There is no negotiated rate and no different number for a customer who asks twice.
Batch tiers
| Quantity | Applied | Saving |
|---|---|---|
| 1–9 | × 1.00 | , |
| 10–24 | × 0.98 | 2% |
| 25–49 | × 0.97 | 3% |
| 50–199 | × 0.95 | 5% |
| 200 or more | × 0.93 | 7% |
Turnaround
| Option | Lead time | Applied |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | 5–7 working days | × 1.00 |
| Express | 2–3 working days | × 1.35 |
Finish
| Finish | What happens | Per part |
|---|---|---|
| None | Straight off the plate, supports left on | , |
| Standard | Supports removed, brim trimmed, part inspected | 1.5 min |
| Sanded | Support marks and layer lines sanded back | 12 min |
| Smoothed or painted | Filled, sanded smooth and primed ready for paint | 35 min |
Finishing is charged as time, not as a percentage, which is why a smoothed finish is disproportionately expensive on a batch: 35 min a part across fifty parts is over 29 hours at the bench. If appearance matters on a batch, PLA Matte off the plate is almost always the better answer than sanding standard PLA.
Indicative prices
Five jobs a business actually orders
Each row is a real geometry run through the same calculator you can use yourself. The assumptions are printed alongside so you can judge how close your own part is.
| Job | Assumptions | Print time | Per unit | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prototype housing | 180 × 120 × 60 mm, 165 cm³ of plastic, PETG, 0.2 mm layers, one off | 3 h 32 m | , | £30.00 |
| Assembly jig | 180 × 120 × 30 mm, 55 cm³, PLA-CF, 4 walls for stiffness, one off | 1 h 14 m | , | £30.00 |
| Mounting brackets, 10 off | 90 × 60 × 40 mm, 28 cm³ each, PETG-CF, 4 walls, 10 units | 8 h 49 m | £4.50 | £45.00 |
| Cable clips, 50 off | 40 × 22 × 14 mm, 3.1 cm³ each, PETG, 50 units on one plate | 7 h 54 m | £1.62 | £81.00 |
| Display mounts, 200 off | 70 × 50 × 25 mm, 17.5 cm³ each, PLA Matte, 200 units across several plates | 113 h 56 m | £2.15 | £430.00 |
Single parts frequently land on the £30minimum, which is the honest answer for a job that takes half an hour of a person’s attention regardless of how small the part is. Quantity is where the price moves.
Design work and invoicing
If there is no model yet, and how you pay
Design and CAD, £42 an hour
Modelling is quoted separately from printing, with an hour estimate agreed before any work starts. A simple bracket or clip is typically two to four hours; a full enclosure with board standoffs, port cut-outs and fixings is usually eight to sixteen.
You own the output: native files, a STEP export and a print-ready STL or 3MF: whether or not you print with us.
Invoicing
Every job is invoiced, with your purchase order number on it if you send one. New customers settle on completion; established account customers work to 14-day terms.
Bank transfer or card. Batch orders over £250 can be split into a deposit and a balance on delivery.
No VAT: we're not VAT registered. There is nothing to add and nothing to reclaim.
When the estimate changes
The instant figure is modelled from your geometry, not sliced from your file, so we call it an estimate. Before anything is printed we slice it properly and confirm.
If the real figure is lower, you pay the lower one. If unusual geometry, heavy support or very thin walls push it materially higher, you hear why before we start and you are free to walk away.
Next step
Run your own part through the same calculator
Drop in an STL or 3MF and you will see this build-up for your geometry, at your quantity, with the plate count worked out from your part's footprint. The file is measured in your browser and never uploaded.
Instant estimate. We confirm the price once we've sliced your file.