At a glance
| Best for | Repetitive workshop and production tasks where accuracy currently depends on care |
|---|---|
| Material | PETG — black as standard, white and other colours on request |
| Typical price | £15–£45 depending on size; sets are cheaper per piece |
| Lead time | Dispatched 2–3 working days from payment |
| Minimum order | One, though jigs are often ordered in pairs or sets |
| Maximum part size | 256 × 256 × 256 mm in one piece; larger parts split and joined |
What we take on
- Drill and router guides
- Alignment and assembly fixtures
- Spacers, shims and setting gauges
- Soft jaws and workholding for the bench
- Go/no-go gauges for checking parts
What to send
Jigs need to be right rather than pretty, so dimensions matter more here than anywhere else on this site.
- The STL
- Any dimension that must be exact, and how much tolerance you can live with
- Whether the jig will be clamped, screwed down or held by hand
- If drilling through it: the bit diameter, so we can advise on a bush
How the price is worked out
Jigs are often large and flat, which prints quickly and uses less material than the size suggests. Where a jig needs to be stiff, ribbing the underside costs far less than printing it solid. Repeats of the same jig are simply the same file ordered again — there is no setup charge on a reorder.
Where this works well
- Repeatability to roughly ±0.3 mm
- Shapes that would take hours to mill from aluminium
- Jigs that need replacing when the product changes
Where it doesn’t
- Drilling directly against printed plastic — use a steel bush pressed into the print
- Anything clamped hard enough to crush plastic
- High-temperature work near welding or heat guns
Drill guides need a steel bush
This is the single most common mistake. A drill bit spinning against a printed hole will wander and widen it within a handful of uses, and after that the jig is worse than useless because it looks accurate and is not. Design the hole to take a standard drill bush, press it in, and the jig lasts. Leave 0.05 mm interference and warm the plastic slightly if it is tight.
Questions people ask about this
How long will a printed jig last?
For hand assembly work, indefinitely. For anything abrasive or repeatedly clamped, expect wear — but the answer is usually to print a replacement for a few pounds rather than to over-engineer the first one.
Can you print a jig from my drawing rather than an STL?
Simple flat jigs, often yes. Send a dimensioned sketch through the contact page and we will tell you whether it is something we can draw up and what it would cost.
Tooling file ready?
Price it now — most workshop jigs come in under £40.