✅ Choose your printer.

Most functional prints will be done on our Stratasys Fortus 450mc FDM printer, which uses a range of plastics, but has a lower resolution.

For models which need color or fine details, yet are limited on strength, our HP580 powder printer is preferred.

✅ Check your part size.

Make sure your part's overall dimensions fit in the build envelope of the printer you'd like to use. If your part is larger than this volume, try cutting it into smaller parts for assembly. Some assembly tips are shown here.

✅ Export your part.

The preferred file format for 3D printing is .3MF, for a host of reasons detailed by the 3MF Consortium. Other file formats, including .STL, .OBJ, and .STEP files are acceptable, but can require further post-processing which may delay your print.

⚠️ This step greatly affects the quality and usability of your final part.

✅ Check your manifold.

3D printing requires a part with a properly defined manifold, also called a watertight mesh. A non-manifold part has errors which cause the 3D mesh to have holes, and are typically produced by export errors. However, in many programs (particularly Creo Parametric), properly exporting the part as demonstrated in the last step doesn't guarantee a watertight mesh. We recommend running the part through Microsoft's 3D Builder, a free app that is excellent at detecting and fixing mesh errors. This program typically comes pre-installed with Windows, and can be found from the Start menu.

Note that .3MF files typically don't suffer roundoff errors like .STLs do, which helps avoid non-manifold issues.

Checking your model in 3D Builder is simple. After opening the program, click Open (or find Open on the left sidebar) and select your model. If your part has any mesh errors, 3D Builder will typically be able to spot them. Just click the repair dialog, and your mesh is fixed! We recommend saving this file over the old one to prevent mixing up your versions.

Note that in very rare cases the repair tool may be unable to fix the part without marring the geometry. If you notice any incongruities between the initial mesh and the repaired one, simply re-export the part from your modeling software in a different quality or file format and try again.

✅ Check your units.

Before you leave 3D Builder, it's worthwhile to check that your part is the correct scale. This can be done by simply looking at the labeled grid lines on the ground plane, or by clicking on the part to see its overall dimensions. Frequently, parts are sent to the shop whose units don't align with the part size (e.g. a 1cm part appears as 25.4cm because it was exported using inches). Re-export using the correct units, or use .3MF which typically negates this issue entirely.