A 3D print mail-order service. The price on upload is the price you pay. Single units to large batches, no minimum order, no quote-by-email loop. FDM, SLA, and CNC cutting under one roof, dispatched in days.
A 3D print mail-order service. Upload your CAD file, we print and post. Single units to large batches, no minimum order, no quote-by-email loop. FDM, SLA, and CNC cutting under one roof, rapid dispatch. The price on upload is the price you pay.
A founder, an engineer, a maker, or a small studio needs one part. They send a CAD file to a print shop. A quote comes back two days later. They reply with a tweak. Another two days. The price changes. The quantity demands a minimum order they don't need.
Offshore options are cheaper on the part but unpredictable on the calendar - dispatched from another continent, held at customs, arriving with shipping damage no one is accountable for. Post-COVID, supply chain fragility is the cost no quote captures.
Existing UK on-demand 3D print services are quote-by-email by design. The economics work for them when each job carries an account manager. They don't work for the customer with one part, two parts, or a hundred parts who needs the price the moment they upload.
ProtoParcel is built so the price on upload is the price you pay, single-unit jobs are first-class economics, and dispatch is days not weeks.
ProtoParcel is built in three layers, each automated end-to-end. No human touches the order between upload and dispatch unless something fails the QC layer. Every job carries its own ticket - process, material lot, parameters, QC pass.
CAD upload triggers an instant quote against the chosen process and material. The quote is the price - not a starting estimate. On accept, the job is queued, scheduled, and assigned to a printer with the right material loaded. No quote written by hand. No price quoted by email.
Three processes under one roof: FDM (PLA, PETG, ABS, TPU, composites), SLA (resin), and CNC cutting (acrylic, plywood, MDF, sheet metal). Print parameters are computed from the geometry, not chosen by hand. The QC layer checks dimensional tolerance and finish before the part is packed.
Same-day dispatch on stock-process FDM and CNC jobs. Resin parts dispatch when cured. Each part ships with a job ticket - process, material lot, print parameters, dimensional check - so the customer can repeat-order an identical part without an engineer in the loop.
These commitments are enforced by the order pipeline. Removing them means rewriting the system. They are how single-unit jobs stay economic, how prices stay honest, and how dispatch stays in days not weeks.
The price on upload is the price the customer pays. No revised quotes. No surcharges for short notice. No "we'll get back to you in two days". The quote engine is the only path to a price - a human typing one is a bug, not a feature.
Single-unit jobs are first-class. The same per-part economics apply at quantity 1 and quantity 100. No "minimum 20 to make it worth our while". The automation is what makes single-unit jobs economic - it is built into the pipeline, not bolted on.
Filament, resin, polymer, plywood, acrylic - all UK suppliers. All printing happens in the UK. All dispatch happens from the UK. No offshore intermediary, no customs held, no shipping uncertainty across continents. Materials, machines, and people are local.
Production discipline. Every job carries its own ticket - process, material lot, parameters, QC pass - so the customer always knows exactly how their part was made and can repeat the order without an engineer translating between them and the printer. The pipeline is the audit.
Three processes, three classes of part. From a single prototype iteration to a small production run, the pipeline doesn't change. Material is chosen by load case and finish; process is chosen by geometry. The customer uploads a CAD file - the pipeline does the rest.
The on-demand engine is process-agnostic. Once a job goes from CAD to dispatch in a single pipeline, the same pipeline extends to the other places parts are needed - functional electronics, in-house production, on-demand for engineering teams.
FDM and SLA online from day one. CNC cutting integrated by phase end. Open to consumer, maker, and small-business customers. Quote engine, job queue, machine monitoring, QC pipeline, and dispatch automated end-to-end.
Conductive traces and antenna elements printed directly into structural components. Ceramic-filled resin for thermal and RF applications. Multi-material extends the catalogue from passive plastic parts to functional electronics and high-performance composites.
The same pipeline, packaged for engineering teams who need on-demand parts without standing up their own print shop. Dedicated production lines for partner ventures running on the same automation - the same job ticket, the same QC, the same dispatch discipline.
“The price on upload is the price you pay.”