How to Get a Part 3D Printed in Mumbai

Step one

Pick the process before you pick the printer

Most enquiries arrive asking for "3D printing" when the part actually wants something else, or wants printing plus something else. The process follows from what the part has to do, so start there.

If the part needs…	Use	Why
To be tested for fit or function, fast	FDM	Hours, not weeks, and cheap enough to iterate. Engineering thermoplastics, so it behaves roughly like the finished part.
Fine detail or a smooth surface out of the machine	SLA resin	Small features and near-injection surfaces. The right answer for masters, jewellery patterns and anything judged at reading distance.
Flat, true faces or tapped holes	CNC	Printing cannot give you a machined datum. When tolerance is the whole job, machine it.
Ten to a few hundred identical parts, cast-quality	Silicone mould + PU casting	Below the volume that justifies steel tooling, casting beats printing each one — on cost and on surface.
To be bigger than any print bed	Sectioned FDM build	Printed in pieces, keyed, joined, reinforced and finished so the seams disappear.
Support-free complex geometry, or metal	SLS, MJF or DMLS via partners	Made by vetted partners and named on the quote, so the part goes to the process that suits it best.

The full in-house-versus-partner split, with machines named, is on the capabilities page.

Routes in practice

What the in-house routes look like as parts

Parts from the in-house routes in the table above.

Three palm-sized open housings on an office conference table: orange FDM with layer lines, smooth grey SLA resin, and off-white machined plastic with a tapped hole — **One housing, three routes**FDM shows its layer lines, SLA resin comes off smooth and fine, and CNC gives flat faces and a tapped hole.

Step two

Choose material by failure mode, not by name

The useful question is not "which plastic is best" — it is "how would this part fail?" Answer that and the material picks itself.

It only has to be looked at

PLA or PLA+. Stiff, precise, takes detail and finishes beautifully. It creeps under sustained load and softens in a hot car, so keep it off anything structural or outdoors.

It will be handled, dropped or flexed

PETG. Tougher than PLA, slightly forgiving, and it tolerates weather. The default for enclosures, fixtures and anything a customer will actually pick up.

It will get hot, or live outside

ABS or ASA. Heat-resistant and paintable; ASA in particular holds up to UV, which matters more in Mumbai than most spec sheets admit.

It has to bend and come back

TPU. Gaskets, grips, bumpers and protective covers. Print it slower, design it thinner than feels right.

It has moving parts or clips

PA (nylon). Wear-resistant and tough where a rigid material would fatigue and snap at a living hinge.

It must not deflect

PA-CF or PETG-CF. Carbon-fibre reinforced and genuinely rigid — jigs, fixtures, brackets, motorsport parts. Stiff, but more brittle: rigid is not the same as strong.

Character and typical use for each of these is tabulated on the capabilities page. If you are unsure, describe the loading and the environment in your enquiry and let us choose — that is a free part of the quote.

Two identical printed phone-mount brackets on a sun-baked car dashboard: the white PLA one sagged and warped by heat, the black ASA one still straight — **PLA sags in a hot car, ASA holds its shape**A dashboard in Mumbai sun is past PLA's softening point. ASA keeps its shape and handles UV.

Step three

Send the right file

STEP is better than STL. An STL is a mesh — a shell of triangles that has forgotten it was ever a cylinder. A STEP file keeps the real geometry, so if a wall needs thickening or a hole needs to move, we can edit it instead of rebuilding it. Send STEP when you have it; we accept STL and IGES too.

Units and scale. Most files that arrive wrong arrive in inches. State the intended overall dimension somewhere in your message and we will catch a mismatch before it becomes a part.

No CAD at all is fine. A sketch on paper, a photograph of the broken part with a ruler next to it, or the part itself dropped at the studio all work. Modelling from a sketch, a sample or a scan is part of what we do.

Say what matters. One line — "this face mates with a bearing", "this edge is visible", "this has to survive being sat on" — changes orientation, wall thickness and material. Without it we are guessing, and guessing shows up in the part.

A good enquiry, in four lines

The file, or a photo with a dimension on it
Quantity — one, ten, or two hundred
The date you actually need it
What the part has to survive

That is enough for a real quote within 24 hours. Start one →

Step four

Know what tolerance means here

Additive manufacturing is not machining, and any studio quoting you machining tolerances off a printer is selling something. Our in-house FDM holds around ± 0.2 mm or ± 0.2%, whichever is larger, with layer heights from 0.08 to 0.28 mm. Tighter is achievable on specific features after a design review, and when it is, the quote says so for that feature rather than for the whole part.

Two things surprise first-time buyers. Printed holes come out undersized, because the melt pulls inward — so we either oversize them in the model or drill them afterwards, and either way you should tell us which holes are functional. And parts are anisotropic: a printed part is meaningfully weaker across the layer lines than along them, which is why orientation is a design decision and not a machine setting.

If a dimension genuinely has to be exact, the honest answer is often to print the part and machine that one feature. We will propose that rather than quietly missing the number.

Step five

What actually drives the price

People ask for a rate per gram. It is a fair question and a misleading unit — FDM is often quoted by material weight, resin and SLS by part volume in cubic centimetres, and cast or moulded work per piece against a tooling charge. Comparing a per-gram number to a per-cm³ number tells you nothing, which is part of why quotes across studios look so inconsistent.

What moves the number, roughly in order:

Machine time, not material.
Filament is rarely the expensive part. A tall part occupies a printer for a day whether it is solid or mostly air, and that occupancy is most of the cost.
Finishing.
The gap between "off the printer" and "looks like a product" is hand labour — sanding grades, filling, priming, paint, clear-coat. On a display piece this can exceed the printing. It is also the thing that makes the part worth having, so we quote it as a named grade, not as a vague extra.
Support and orientation.
Supports cost twice — material to build, labour to remove, and marks to sand out. A part reoriented at design review is often cheaper with no change to the geometry.
Quantity, and where the crossover sits.
Printing scales almost linearly: ten parts cost close to ten times one. Casting front-loads a mould and then gets cheap per piece. Somewhere between them is a crossover, and finding it for your quantity is part of the quote.
Tolerance and inspection.
Tighter tolerances mean slower printing, more checking and higher scrap. Ask for them where you need them and not everywhere.

We do not publish a rate card, because a single number would be either meaningless or wrong for your part. We do quote within 24 hours, and the quote itself breaks out process, material, finish and timeline so you can see what you are paying for and argue with any line of it.

Questions

The ones we are asked most

Should I send an STL or a STEP file?

Send STEP if you have it. An STL is a mesh — a shell of triangles that has forgotten it was ever a cylinder — so if a wall needs thickening or a hole needs to move, it has to be rebuilt rather than edited. A STEP file keeps the real geometry and stays editable. We accept STL and IGES as well, and we can model from a sketch, a photograph with a dimension on it, or the physical part.

What tolerance can I expect from a 3D printed part?

Our in-house FDM holds around plus or minus 0.2 mm or 0.2%, whichever is larger, at layer heights from 0.08 to 0.28 mm. Tighter is achievable on specific features after a design review, and the quote states it for that feature rather than for the whole part. Printed holes come out undersized because the melt pulls inward, so tell us which holes are functional. If a dimension genuinely has to be exact, the honest answer is often to print the part and machine that one feature.

FDM or SLA resin — which should I choose?

Choose FDM when the part has to be tested for fit or function and you want to iterate in hours, and when it needs to behave like an engineering thermoplastic. Choose SLA resin when fine detail or a smooth surface straight out of the machine is the point — masters, casting patterns, jewellery work and anything judged at reading distance. FDM is faster and cheaper to iterate; resin wins on surface and small features.

How much does 3D printing cost in Mumbai?

There is no single useful rate. FDM is often quoted by material weight, resin and SLS by part volume in cubic centimetres, and cast or moulded work per piece against a tooling charge, so a per-gram figure and a per-cubic-centimetre figure cannot be compared. What actually moves the price, roughly in order: machine time rather than material, finishing labour, support and orientation, quantity and where the casting crossover sits, and how tight the tolerances are. We do not publish a rate card because one number would be either meaningless or wrong for your part, but we quote within 24 hours and break out process, material, finish and timeline.

Which material should I pick?

Pick by how the part would fail. PLA if it only has to be looked at. PETG if it will be handled, dropped or flexed. ABS or ASA if it will get hot or live outdoors, with ASA for UV. TPU if it has to bend and return. PA nylon for moving parts, clips and living hinges. PA-CF or PETG-CF where it must not deflect — rigid, though more brittle, since rigid is not the same as strong. If you are unsure, describe the loading and the environment and we will choose; that is part of the quote, not an extra.

How long does a 3D printed part take?

Most first articles come off the in-house FDM fleet the same week, and revisions turn around in hours rather than weeks. A resin master, a silicone mould and cast run, or a large sectioned build that has to be joined and finished are all planned jobs measured in longer than that. Send the date you actually need it with the enquiry and the quote will tell you whether it fits rather than discovering it later.

Can you print something bigger than the printer bed?

Yes. Parts larger than the bed are sectioned, printed as pieces, keyed, joined, reinforced and finished so the seams do not read. It is the same method behind our exhibition and large-format work, and it is a design decision as much as a printing one — where the splits fall affects strength, transport and how the piece is reassembled on site.

Do you do more than printing?

Yes, and it is usually the reason a part looks finished. In our Powai studio we run FDM on a Bambu Lab fleet, SLA resin on HeyGears Reflex 2 Pro, CNC machining, silicone moulding, polyurethane casting and a hand finishing bench. SLS, MJF, large-format SLA and metal printing go through named partners, and the quote labels partner-routed work as such rather than presenting it as in-house.

How to get a part 3D printed in Mumbai.