Rapid Prototyping & One-Off Parts
Send a file — or a sketch — and hold the part in your hand.
A drawing tells you what you meant to design. A printed part tells you what you actually designed. Prototyping is the cheapest way to find the problem you have not thought of yet, and it is the work we most like doing — you send a file, we print it, and a few days later you find out whether the clearance you eyeballed on screen is really there.
Who this is for
- Product designers testing fit and ergonomics before committing to tooling
- Engineers checking clearances and assembly order on a real part
- Inventors and start-ups proving a concept before spending on production
- Anyone who needs one of something that does not exist yet
What we need to quote
Not all of it — whatever you have. We will ask about the rest.
- A file if you have one — STL, STEP, 3MF or OBJ
- Or a sketch, a photo and rough dimensions if you do not; we will design it
- What the part has to do: indoors, outdoors, load-bearing, flexible, hot
- When you need it by
Materials for this work
PLA
Display pieces, models and indoor parts where crisp detail and colour matter more than heat resistance.
PETG
The general-purpose workhorse — tougher than PLA, handles moisture and moderate heat, good for functional parts.
ASA
Outdoor and vehicle parts. UV-stable and weather-resistant, so it will not go brittle or fade in sunlight.
TPU
Flexible parts — gaskets, bumpers, grips, protective sleeves and anything that needs to bend or absorb impact.
Prototyping & One-Offs — questions we get asked
What file formats do you accept?
STL, STEP, 3MF and OBJ all work. STEP is the most useful to us because it keeps the real geometry, so if we need to tweak a wall thickness or add a fillet we can do it properly rather than patching a mesh. If all you have is a photo and some measurements, send those instead — we design from those too.
I do not have a 3D file at all. Can you still help?
Yes, and it is a common way for projects to start. Send a sketch, a photo, a drawing or a description with a few key measurements and we will model it for you, then print it. You end up owning a proper file as well as the part.
What if my file has errors in it?
We check every file before printing and fix the usual problems — non-manifold edges, flipped normals, gaps, wall thicknesses too thin to survive. If something needs a real design decision rather than a repair, we come back to you and ask rather than guessing.
How big can a prototype be?
Individual pieces print up to 256 × 256 × 256 mm. Larger prototypes are printed in sections and assembled — we agree where it splits before we print so the joints land somewhere sensible.
Can you print one now and hundreds later?
That is the usual path, and it is why we quote prototypes knowing a production run may follow. Approve the sample first, then we scale it. Nothing about the prototype needs redoing to move into a batch.