Parts that have a job to do.
Brackets that carry load, jigs that hold tolerance, parts for machines that are stopped. Priced from your geometry, measured before it leaves.
What comes through here most
- 01
Replacement parts
Broken, discontinued, or quoted six weeks out. Bring the broken one. A working replacement inside the week.
- 02
Prototypes and iterations
Three versions of the same part, so you can hold the difference instead of arguing about it.
- 03
Jigs, fixtures and tooling
Drill guides, assembly fixtures, soft jaws. The highest-value printing anybody does.
- 04
Short production runs
Tens to low hundreds. Past that we say so and point you at injection molding.
Materials, and when each is right
PLA is the one people have heard of. It is usually the wrong answer for a part that has to work.
Material
The default for functional parts. Tough, mildly flexible, handles moisture and mild chemicals.
Finish
Layer lines visible. The default, and the least expensive.
Supports
Overhangs past 45° need supports. They add material and cleanup, so we orient the part to avoid them when we can, and say so in the quote.
The specifications
- Process
- Two materials or two colours in one part, and soluble support where it earns its place.
- Build volume
- 235.5 × 256 × 256 mm when both nozzles are in play. Bigger than that gets split and bonded, and we will say so before quoting.
- Heated chamber
- This is what makes ABS and ASA behave. Without it they warp and delaminate, which is why most desktop shops quietly steer you to PLA.
- Layer height
- 0.2 mm is the default. Finer costs machine time, and on most functional parts it buys you nothing.
- Dimensional tolerance
- The same figure Protolabs Network publishes for FDM. Tighter than that wants machining, and we will tell you when it does.
- Inspection
- Measured by hand against your drawing on the features you marked critical. Not a CMM, and never described as one.
- Materials on hand
- Anything else is sourced same day in Chicago. A shop two thousand miles away cannot do that, which is most of the point of using this one.
- Machining
- Metal and tight-tolerance work goes out to a machine shop, comes back here, and gets measured before it reaches you. $1,000 minimum job.
Design rules for a part that prints
The file is usually the problem. These are the ten things we check first.
- Minimum wall
- Two perimeters from a 0.4 mm nozzle come to 0.84 mm. A 1.0 mm wall gives the slicer room to lay both. Thinner than 0.8 mm prints as a gap or a single fragile line.
- Unsupported overhang
- Past 45° the plastic sags. Up to 60° prints on a cooled machine, but it prints ugly. Design to 45° or accept support material and the finish it leaves.
- Hole size
- Printed holes come out small. The inner loop cools and pulls inward. Model them oversize, or give us the fit you need and we drill or ream to size after.
- Small holes
- Small printed holes come out undersized and faceted. Design them oversize or leave them for a drill. Around 2.0 mm is where we start treating a hole as a post-print operation.
- Clearance
- Starting clearances for this process, in millimetres, checked on the part. Material, orientation and feature size all move them. Printed in place, 0.4 mm is the least that will come apart.
- Text
- Raised or recessed, on a top face. Text on a vertical wall wants a heavier stroke, and recessed beats raised there. Thinner strokes blur.
- Bridge
- The machine spans farther on a good day. Ten millimetres is where we support the span or change the geometry rather than rely on it.
- Bed edge
- The first layer squishes wider than the model. A 45° chamfer prints clean. A fillet on the bed side comes out as a lip.
- Insert boss
- Around a heat-set brass insert. Inserts push outward as they seat, and a thinner boss splits along the layer line. Larger inserts and softer materials want more.
- Layers and load
- A printed part is strong along its layers and weak between them. Put the main load in the plane of the layers wherever the geometry allows. This is the one we fix most often.
For a 0.4 mm nozzle at 0.2 mm layers. None of this is a reason not to send the file.
The honest version
- Standard
- Rush
- Minimum, print only
- Minimum, with design or GD&T
- Collection
- SLS, MJF, metal printing, or production injection molding. If your part needs those, we'll tell you and point you somewhere real.
- Runs in the thousands are not printed here. We prototype and validate the part, then point you at a production supplier instead of dropping you where it gets big.
- Anything requiring certified material traceability, FAI, or CMM inspection reports.