The price is built, not looked up
Every instant price on this platform comes from the same sequence: geometry analysis, an orientation search, a real slicer run on the profile that would produce the part, plate packing, then the published cost and pricing rules. Machine time and support volume are read out of the G-code, not fitted to a bounding box.
The four things that move it
- Machine hours. Dominant for almost every part. Driven by height, path length and layer height far more than by mass.
- Plate occupancy. How many of your parts fit on one plate, and how many plates a quantity needs. This is what makes the quantity break table real.
- Support volume. Printed, then removed by hand. Paid for twice.
- Material and failure allowance. Real, but usually the smallest of the four for a plastic part.
Reading a quantity break table
The table shows parts-per-plate and plate count alongside each price. If the unit price barely falls with quantity, the part is plate-limited — it is large or tall, and more of them simply means more plates. If it falls steeply, the plate was mostly empty at quantity one.
Levers that usually work
- Reduce height. Machine time scales with layer count before anything else.
- Design out support — chamfers and self-supporting angles instead of flat overhangs.
- Choose a coarser layer height where the surface does not need to be fine. A draft profile is a different profile, not a discount.
- Order a quantity that fills a plate rather than one part more than fills one.
- Choose the economy service level when the date allows it.
Less effective than people expect
Hollowing a part that is already mostly sparse infill saves less than people expect. If a price surprises you, look at which of the four drivers above is unexpectedly large — the quote shows enough detail to tell.
Infill, walls and layer height
These three are properties of the print profile, not free sliders, and each one moves the print time. A finer layer height means more layers and a smoother curved surface; more walls or denser infill mean more path to lay down and a stiffer part. On the quote you choose between the profiles installed on our printers and see the price change straight away — which is a better guide than any rule of thumb.
Finishes
Anything done by hand after printing — removing support carefully from a show face, sanding, painting, a clear coat — is labour on top of machine time, and it is priced as such. If the part will be hidden inside something, the as-printed finish is usually the right one.
Why we don’t quote a price per gram
A per-gram price is easy to publish and easy to compare, and it is the wrong unit for FDM. Two parts of the same weight can take very different times to print: a tall, thin part with lots of support takes far longer than a flat, compact one. Pricing by weight means the compact part subsidises the tall one. Because every price here comes from slicing your actual file, you pay for what your part actually takes — and you can see why.
Getting a real number
No article can tell you what your part will cost; your file can. Upload it to the instant quote — no account is needed to see the price — and try a different material, layer height or quantity to see which of the drivers above matters for your part.