3D Print Shop Management: Orders, Costing and Filament

The order desk, the costing, the filament and the money, in one place.

For a shop selling prints: one printer on a desk, a garage full of them, or a farm. The reading below is what shops asked us before they asked for the software.

One order, from the first message to the hand-over

A made-up order, not a customer story: no real shop, no real figures. At each step, what you do and what the app does by itself.

An order for 20 pieces comes in

You: Create the order from a saved print model and type 20 - or it arrives filled in from your shop page, a connected online store or a CSV import.

The app: Works out the plate runs from how many pieces fit on one plate - five runs at four to a plate - and the grams and print time from the figures saved for the printer the model names. Those two cannot be typed over.
It is costed before anything is printed

You: Set your rates once for the workspace. Keep the suggested price, or type your own - it is kept as typed.

The app: Prices the plastic at the spools it will actually use, adds your waste allowance, the machine wear and electricity for those hours and your labour, then applies your margin. The order shows the price and the profit.
It joins the production queue

You: The card waits in New on the board. Check the printer - it comes from the model, and you can pick another - start the print on the machine yourself, then drag the card to In progress.

The app: Will not start an order that has no printer. It sends no file and starts nothing on the machine. With the agent connected, the card shows progress and time left, and when the printer starts a job it offers you the next order waiting for it - you confirm.
The filament comes off the shelf

You: Recount a spool by hand when the shelf and the app disagree.

The app: The moment the card goes to In progress, it reserves the grams on particular spools - the ones loaded in that printer first - and takes them off stock. When a filament type falls below the line you set, it tells you once.
Ready, and handed over

You: Move the order to Ready to ship and say how many pieces came out bad. Hand it over, or book a parcel with a connected carrier, and mark the order paid.

The app: With the agent connected, the card says when the print has finished. Once a parcel is booked, it follows it: the order moves to Shipped when the carrier takes it, and cash on delivery is marked paid on delivery. A buyer from your shop page gets the status emails without you writing them.

Afterwards the order keeps its cost, price and profit, and the month adds up in the analytics.

Already running Printago or SimplyPrint? Those drive your machines. LayerFlow3D runs the order around them - what it cost you, what to charge, what is left on the shelf, and the page a buyer orders from. Plenty of shops run both.

See it side by side →

Where to start

Pricing an OrcaSlicer file in LayerFlow3D

Which OrcaSlicer exports LayerFlow3D reads, what it takes from them in the workshop and on a shop page, and how a sliced file becomes a price, with a worked example you can repeat.

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Which software a 3D print shop needs, and in what order

A plain map of 3D print shop software - orders and costing, printer control, failure detection, stock - what each kind is for, one job traced through end to end, and what most shops can skip for a year.

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Setting up a Bambu print farm, Developer Mode included

How to run several Bambu Lab printers as a farm: network mode, what Developer Mode is for, and what you give up either way.

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Filament inventory that does not drift

Why spool counts stop matching reality, and the small number of habits that keep filament stock honest without anybody weighing everything on a Sunday.

Read it →