"How much for this?" is the question we answer most often, and the honest first reply is another question: how big is it, and what is it for? A chess pawn and a full terrain board are both "a 3D print", and the gap between them is not a rounding error. What follows is what a price is actually made of, in the order the calculator works through it.
What are you paying for?
Four things, roughly in order of how much they move the number:
- Volume of material. Not the size of the box a model would fit in — the volume of the model itself. A hollow, thin-walled piece can cost a fraction of a solid one with the same silhouette.
- The process. FDM lays down melted filament; SLA cures liquid resin a layer at a time. They have different material costs and very different amounts of hand-finishing.
- Infill, on FDM. How solid the inside is. A decorative piece does not need to be a brick. Resin prints are hollowed differently, so infill is an FDM-only setting.
- Layer height and finishing. A finer layer means more layers, which means more time on the machine. Then there is the work after the print: supports off, wash, cure, sand, prime.
Why does the same model cost more in resin?
Resin is the more expensive material, but that is not the whole story. An SLA print comes off the plate wet, still attached to a forest of supports, and needs washing and curing before anyone can look at it properly. That is bench time, and bench time is two people in Wrocław, not a machine running unattended overnight. What you get for it is detail an FDM nozzle physically cannot reach — down to 0.04 mm — which is why every miniature we sell is resin and most terrain is not.
So what does a real quote look like?
Upload an STL or OBJ file up to 100 MB and the calculator measures it and prices it, in PLN, EUR or USD, without an account and without waiting for us to open our email. Pick the process, the layer height, the infill if you are on FDM, and one of five finishing levels; the number updates as you go. Most jobs go on the machine within one to five working days.
A quotation is our price for a job, not a bill. Nothing is printed and nothing is charged until you accept it — and if the model, the layer height or the finish needs a change, reply on the order and we will re-price it.
The part a calculator cannot do
Geometry it can measure. Judgement it cannot. If a wall is too thin to survive being cleaned up, if a piece would print better split in two, or if the file is a scan that needs repairing before anything useful comes out of it, that is a conversation. Send it as a custom request and one of us will look at the actual mesh.
Open the price calculator and try it with your own file, or browse the shop if you would rather we had already made the decisions.