What happens after the first order
When a job completes, the file, the layer height, the infill, the colour and the orientation we printed it in are all stored against your reference. Your tracking page keeps working after the parts arrive, and it carries a reorder link.
Press it and you get the same part, printed the same way, at the same price per unit, with a new reference and a fresh tracking page. No re-uploading, no re-choosing settings, no waiting for anyone to reply. The commonest cause of a wrong repeat order is somebody re-specifying it from memory, and this removes that step entirely.
Why the second run costs less
Print cost is mostly machine time, and machine time per part falls when parts share a plate. A single bracket occupies a whole build; twenty of them fill the plate properly and the handling fee is charged once for the order rather than once per part.
| One part, ordered five times | Five handling fees, five part-prices, five parcels, five separate build setups. |
|---|---|
| Five parts, ordered once | One handling fee, one parcel, one plate. Meaningfully cheaper for exactly the same plastic. |
| A proven repeat run | No design checking to redo and no first-article risk, because the setup already produced a good part. |
So if you know you will need six of something over a year, six now beats one every other month. If you cannot forecast that, reorder is the next best thing.
Batches, honestly
Where printing stays the right answer
- 1 to 50 units. Routine. No tooling, no setup charge, no minimum.
- Parts that keep changing. Revise the file and the next run is simply different — nothing to re-tool.
- Consumable tooling. Jigs and fixtures that wear out and get replaced on a cycle.
- Spares inventory for something no longer manufactured.
Where it stops being the right answer
- Thousands of units. A mould tool wins on unit cost and we will say so.
- Tolerances under ±0.3 mm. That is machining, not printing.
- Anything structural, food-contact or safety-critical. Not in PETG, not from us.
- A finish that has to look moulded. Layer lines are visible; we do not paint or polish.
Paying for repeat work
Card through the quote tool works exactly as it does for a one-off. If purchase orders and invoices are how your business buys things, email us instead and we will set up invoice terms for pre-arranged batch and repeat runs — there is no account application, it is a conversation.
Every job, however it is paid for, gets a reference, a status page and an email at each stage. That is your paper trail without having to ask for one.
Before you commit to a batch
Order one. Genuinely — a single part is £5 minimum plus the handling fee, and it tells you what fifty will look like. We would much rather you spent fifteen pounds finding out the wall is too thin than four hundred discovering it across a whole run.
If the test part shows a problem, we will tell you what to change. Once it is right, that file is the proven one and every reorder comes off it.
Start with one
Price a single part now. If it is right, the reorder link does the rest for as long as you need it.