How 3D Printing Cornwall reviews an existing production setup — G-code, print profiles, bed layout, materials and machine configuration — and finds the throughput already sitting inside it.
Production and process optimisation
57% reduction in print time
Same machines, reconfigured
Koobz, Powerful UK and Green Tech Automotive
Most businesses running 3D printing at production volume reach the same ceiling. Orders grow, the machines run flat out, and the obvious answer is to buy more of them. It is also the expensive answer, and very often the wrong one.
The reason is that a print job is not a fixed quantity of time. It is the output of dozens of decisions — toolpath strategy, wall and infill configuration, layer height, speed and acceleration limits, part orientation, how many parts share the bed, which material is actually required rather than which one is habitually used. Most production setups are running settings chosen once, early on, when the priority was getting a part to work at all.
Those settings then calcify. They get copied to the next part, and the next, and a number that was never optimised becomes the number the whole operation plans around. Machine capacity is quietly rationed by a decision nobody remembers making.
Our consultancy work starts from the assumption that the capacity is already there. The job is to find it without compromising the part.
A production line that cannot keep up with demand. Machine time that has become the constraint on growth. Parts failing or warping in service. A quote for more hardware they would rather not sign. Sometimes it is simply the suspicion — usually correct — that the setup could be doing more than it is.
The slicer’s default output is a reasonable starting point and rarely an efficient one. We review the generated G-code directly — travel moves, retraction behaviour, acceleration and jerk limits, wall ordering, seam placement and the wasted motion that accumulates invisibly across thousands of layers. On a long print, small inefficiencies repeated ten thousand times are the print time.
Layer height, wall count, infill density and pattern, and speed are usually treated as a single quality dial. They are not. Each trades differently against strength, surface finish and time, and the right combination depends entirely on what the part has to survive. We rebuild profiles per part rather than per machine, and validate that the part still meets the demands of its application afterwards. Faster is only an achievement if the component still does its job.
Machine time is sold by the hour, not by the part, so the meaningful figure is time per component rather than time per print. Nesting parts efficiently, orienting them for both strength and packing density, and choosing the right batch size can transform the economics of a run without changing anything about the part itself.
Material is where the most expensive mistakes happen. A part that yellows in sunlight, softens near heat, absorbs moisture on the shelf or delaminates under load is a material choice, not a print failure. We match polymer to application — UV stability, heat deflection, stiffness, impact resistance, moisture sensitivity — and just as often we tell a client the grade they are paying a premium for is more than the job requires.
Firmware limits, flow calibration, thermal settings and hardware setup all shape what a machine is capable of before a single file reaches it. We reconfigure the machines themselves, then document the resulting setup and profiles so the gains survive staff changes and do not quietly erode over the following year.
The figures below come from three production components on one client’s existing Ultimaker hardware. No new machines were bought and no processes were outsourced. Every part was re-validated after optimisation to confirm it still met the strength and durability requirements of its application.
Measured across three production components on the same Ultimaker hardware. Gains came from G-code and toolpath optimisation, revised print profiles, bed-space planning and machine reconfiguration — each part re-validated afterwards to confirm it still met the strength requirements of its application.
Most of the gain does not come from one clever trick. It comes from changing the question being asked at each decision.
| Decision | Typical setup | After optimisation |
|---|---|---|
| Print profile | One profile per machine, reused for every part | One profile per part, built around its duty in service |
| Quality settings | Treated as a single dial — higher is safer | Traded individually against strength, finish and time |
| Success measure | Time per print | Time per finished component |
| Bed layout | Whatever fits, arranged by eye | Nested and oriented for packing density and strength |
| Material | The grade always used, or the most expensive available | Matched to UV, heat, load and moisture demands |
| Batch size | As many as fit on the bed | Sized against spool reserve and failure exposure |
| Knowledge | Held by whoever set the machine up | Documented, transferable, survives staff changes |
Percent faster on the best-performing part
Percent cut from a 24-hour production print
New machines required to achieve it
— Michael Hunt, 3D Printing Consultant, 3D Printing Cornwall
Optimisation compounds. A 50% reduction on a part you produce two hundred times a year is not a print setting; it is several weeks of machine capacity returned to the business.
Anything running beyond about eight hours is where inefficiency concentrates. A percentage saving on a twenty-four hour print returns whole shifts, and those are the jobs that most often lock a machine out of the schedule entirely.
When the same component is produced hundreds of times a year, a saving measured in minutes per part becomes weeks of recovered capacity annually. These are also the parts whose settings are least likely to have been revisited since the first successful print.
Gains multiply across a fleet. A profile improvement validated on one machine and documented properly propagates to every identical machine on the floor — which is where consultancy pays for itself several times over rather than once.
Warping, yellowing, softening and delamination are usually material or thermal problems wearing the costume of a print problem. Diagnosing them correctly stops the reprints, the warranty returns and the quiet reputational cost of parts that do not last.
The best time to call us is before the purchase order. If the existing machines are running unoptimised, a capital decision is being made on the basis of a capacity figure that is not real. Sometimes more hardware genuinely is the answer — we will tell you if it is.
Cutting print time is the result that photographs well, but it is rarely the only thing that changes. The same review usually surfaces parts running in a material that is wrong for the application, batch sizes that put a whole spool and a day and a half of machine time at risk in a single failure, and undocumented setups that nobody can reproduce.
We also assess production risk directly — modelling batch sizes against material reserve, machine lock-in and failure exposure, so a client can see the point at which a larger batch stops buying efficiency and starts buying risk. That analysis frequently changes how a business schedules its shifts as much as how it slices its parts.
Where a printed part is the wrong answer altogether, because of load, temperature or duty cycle, we say so and help find the route that is right. We would rather lose a job than supply a part that fails in service.
We provide production and process optimisation consultancy to manufacturers in the UK and internationally. The specifics of each engagement stay confidential.
KoobzOn-demand 3D printed footwear manufacturer, California
Powerful UKCustom parts and accessories for Land Rover and Range Rover vehicles
Green Tech AutomotiveElectric and hybrid vehicle design and manufactureTell us what you are producing, on what machines, and where the bottleneck is. We will tell you honestly whether there is capacity to find — and roughly how much.
