3D printing services are essential for hobbyists and professionals alike. Equipped with warehouses full of many different types of 3D printers, 3D printing services will print anything within their capabilities to meet the client’s specifications. Using these services comes with a much more reasonable price than investing in the equipment and training yourself.
Are you a small business owner who needs to print a part, but your large printer is offline? A 3D scanning business that wants to start selling 3D printed figurines to people but has no color 3D printer? An engineering student who needs a rocket fuel igniter made out of steel for her liquid rocketry club? Or maybe you want to experiment with a new technology or material, like SLS or resin, before investing yourself?
Whatever the case, 3D printing services will be able to handle all of these needs. They serve as a production stopgap for the small business owner, a supplier for the 3D scanning business, and a valuable resource for the engineering student, who likely doesn’t have direct access to a wide range of printing technologies.
As you might imagine, this huge demand in the market has created the space for tons of businesses, big, small, and around the world, to offer on-demand printing services. On top of this, many services have developed a way for customers to obtain a quote for their specifications, often just in a few minutes.
There are several things for you to keep in mind while going through the process of obtaining a quote, starting with where to even find a quoting engine. In this article, we’ll walk you through the process, step by step. Let’s get into it!
How Do Quotes Work?
Like most things in life, using a 3D printing service requires a bit of prior knowledge. This is especially true when it comes to budgeting for 3D printing services. Unlike online retailers like Amazon or Alibaba, 3D printing services and marketplaces don’t keep an inventory of ready-made parts. Instead, they price each 3D model individually depending on a variety of factors.
Fortunately, many services bypass this laborious process with browser-based instantaneous quoting engines. Many 3D printing services implement this online service, including many of the top cheap 3D printing services.
With so many service providers available, on top of the rapidly expanding number of technologies, the space becomes a bit difficult to navigate. One option is to hunt down several possible service options, enter your order specifications, get a quote, and then compare this to all of the other quotes you manage to receive (don’t forget to include shipping costs).
The alternative is to use a 3D printing service marketplace, like Craftcloud. You have to enter your order specifications only once, and Craftcloud will instantly provide you with quotes from several pre-screened 3D printing services. You can compare prices directly and choose whichever works best for you.
No matter the method you choose, quoting systems automatically generate quotes based on a customer’s input into the website. They take into account several factors that can affect the quoted price, such as the size of the print, material choice, type of technology, and any post-processing required to complete the print.
With that said, let’s get to the specifics of what you need to consider before you start looking for quotes so that the process is as smooth as possible.
Preparing to Get an Instant Quote
Instant quoting engines require specific information about the part that you’ll be ordering. Because of this, it’s important to have decided certain things about your order before using the quoting engine. Here are some things to consider:
- What file(s) will you be ordering 3D printed? This question is critical. 3D printing services won’t print technical drawings or even a really nice sketch. They’ll require 3D files that show exactly what should be 3D printed. So, you’ll need to consider what are the files that you’ll need to have and whether they are exactly what you want.
- What size should your print be? Larger 3D prints require more material and more printing time. Additionally, even professional-grade 3D printers have limits as to how large they can print. All of this means that a larger print will drive up the price of the quote.
- Does the file and the website use similar units to represent the shape? STL and OBJ files are naturally unitless (to save computer storage space), so it’s up to you to keep track of whether your file is in millimeters, centimeters, inches, or another length unit.
- What material should the parts be made with? 3D printing services offer several materials with different properties. Does the part need to be temperature-resistant? Chemical-resistant? Maybe it’ll be fine with regular PLA. Does it need to be printed in flexible filament or resin?
- What printing technology should the parts be printed with? 3D printing services often offer multiple 3D printing technologies. What does the tolerance of the part need to be? Does the part need to be watertight? Does it need to be multicolor?
- Is the file physically 3D printable with the selected 3D printing technology? Hollow spheres cannot be completely made by SLA or SLS technologies without trapping resin or powder on the inside. It’s important to design the part so that it can actually be transformed from a 3D file to a real object.
- What post-processing needs to be done to the parts? Many sites offer different post-processing methods that can change the surface finish of a 3D print. Does the print need to be sanded, free of striations? Does a metal print need to be mirror-polished or sandblasted?
- How many objects are being 3D printed? 3D printing services often have a “quantity” option that allows you to order more than one of the same part with one order. If you’re ordering several of one part, you may be able to receive a bulk discount. Some services may only serve orders above a minimum number of parts.
- When do you need the parts? 3D printing services typically offer different production times and shipping options for different levels of urgency. Ordering from a service within your country may be an option for the fastest and cheapest shipping, although production time may vary. How long are you willing to wait for the part to come in?
Pricing Considerations
Additionally, several factors about the 3D printing service that you select will affect the price. Its location (relative to yours), its individual 3D printing capabilities, the courier services that it uses, and its policies regarding the minimum number of orderable parts all affect the total purchase price.
These are all important things for the printing service to know because they affect how much time and funding the service has to invest in your part(s). This, in turn, allows the quoting engine to calculate an accurate and (hopefully) fair quote.
If you aren’t sure of the answer to any of these questions about your 3D printed part, you should prioritize finding answers by looking at why you’re ordering these parts in the first place. After all, a printing service cannot quote and fulfill an incomplete order.
Not sure which material to use? Craftcloud also has a material selection guide that takes customer input on the use of the part and recommends materials based on this input. Recently, it has even offered technical properties of printing materials, including tensile strength and flexural modulus.
If you know the answer to all of these questions, but have questions about the ability of the 3D printing service to create the part or post-process it in a certain way, it might be a good idea to contact the 3D printing service. You can talk to them more in-depth about the process that they use to print the piece. It’s definitely not beneficial to order a part just to find out it isn’t physically printable.
Uploading a Model
For printing services that support instantaneous quoting, the process starts by clicking on “get a quote” or “upload a model” on the website. You may have to make an account to do so.
The process often requires no human interaction and involves uploading the selected files to a website, then specifying the desired quantity of each model. The uploading may take some time, depending on the complexity of your model. Make sure that the units of your file and the units on the instant quoting engine are the same.
Next, with most 3D printing services, you’ll be prompted to specify a material, color, and finish. The options for color and finish will depend on the material (and therefore also the printing technology) you plan to use, so keep that in mind.
Once this is done, the service will either automatically calculate and apply pricing to an online shopping cart or let you know that a 3D printing professional will soon look over your order and provide you with a quote. If you’re unhappy with the quote, you have the option and ability to re-quote the part with different options or search for a better deal with another service.
With the 3D printing service marketplace Craftcloud, you can avoid this time-consuming search for the right quote. Following the same steps you’ll encounter with getting a quote directly from the printing service, Craftcloud can help you compare quotes across several services, all at once. As a marketplace that offers many more options than you might encounter with a single service, you’ll find several possibilities for material, delivery date, printing technology, and price point.
Once you have the desired print specifications and an agreeable purchase price, simply add to cart and you’re done! That’s all it takes to get an instantaneous quote through certain 3D printing services. Once it’s all paid and confirmed, the service will update you periodically on the production progress.
License: The text of "How to Get a 3D Printing Quote Instantly" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.