Short answer
Most orders leave us within 2–3 working days of payment. The print itself is often only a few hours — the rest is queue position, cooling, cleanup, inspection and packing.
Height matters more than size
This is the least intuitive thing about print time. A printer works through a part one layer at a time, so total time tracks the number of layers far more closely than the amount of plastic.
A wide flat plate 20 mm tall might take two hours. A slender post of the same volume standing 200 mm tall takes most of a day, because it is ten times as many layers and each one is mostly the nozzle travelling rather than printing.
If a part is taking longer than you expected, the question to ask is whether it can be laid down rather than stood up.
What layer height does to the clock
Halving the layer height roughly doubles the number of layers and therefore the time. A part that prints in three hours at 0.30 mm takes about four and a half at 0.20 mm and around nine at 0.12 mm. That is the entire reason fine quality costs more.
The parts of the lead time you do not see
| Checking | The file is opened and sliced before anything prints. Problems surface here, not after five hours of printing. |
|---|---|
| Queue | The machines run around the clock, but yours is not the only job on them. This is usually the largest single chunk of the wait. |
| Printing | Anything from twenty minutes to a full day. |
| Cooling and removal | Parts come off the plate once cool. Rushing this warps them. |
| Cleanup | Supports removed, stringing trimmed, edges checked. |
| Inspection and packing | Compared against the model, then packed so it survives the post. |
Why printers running 24/7 does not mean instant
Our machines print overnight and at weekends, which is what makes a two to three day turnaround possible at all. What cannot happen overnight is the human part — checking a file, judging whether a first layer went down properly, deciding whether a finished part is good enough to send. Those happen in working hours, and they are the reason the answer is days rather than hours.
Then the post
Dispatch is not delivery. Standard post typically adds two to three days, tracked services one to two. If a date genuinely matters, choose tracked and order earlier than feels necessary — that is cheaper than paying for speed later.
Ways to actually get it faster
- Ask before ordering, not after — a small part can often slot into a gap
- Choose draft quality if finish does not matter
- Reduce the height of the part if the design allows it
- Send a clean file: anything we have to query costs a day
What this means when you order
If you have a genuine deadline, say so before you order rather than after. We can often bring a small part forward if we know; we cannot once it is in the middle of a queue.
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