You need a 3D-printed part, not a 3D printer

The situation is always the same. The clip holding up the fridge drawer has broken, or the foot of the sofa, or the roller on the blind. The part is not sold on its own, the official spare costs as much as half an appliance, and somebody has told you “just print it in 3D”.

You heard right, but you only heard half the sentence. To get that part you do not need to buy a printer. You need one of the four routes below. How long it takes depends on the case: if the model already exists ready-made, finding it and ordering it is a matter of minutes and then you wait for delivery; if it has to be drawn from scratch, reckoning on a few days and a couple of exchanges of messages is more realistic.

First of all: you need a file

This is the step that stops people, and it has three solutions in order of increasing effort.

The first way is to look for it, because it often exists already. For common spares, somebody has already drawn it and put it online for free. Search Printables, Thingiverse or MakerWorld for the exact name of your appliance and of the part, in English above all (clip, bracket, knob, holder), and in your own language too. The catalogue of spares for household appliances, flat-pack furniture and window blinds is surprisingly large.

The second way is to have it drawn. If it does not exist, you need somebody to draw it from the measurements, and that is where the real cost sits. Printing a small part costs a few euros, the drawing can cost a good deal more, because it is a person’s work. Many makers offer both. Always ask for a separate quote for the drawing and for the printing, so you can see what you are paying for.

The third way is down to you, and it is called measuring properly. Whichever route you take, whoever draws it needs real measurements, not a photo. A caliper costs fifteen euros and is the purchase that returns forty times its price in this story. Measure thicknesses, hole diameters, distances between holes, and photograph the part next to a ruler.

The four routes, and what they cost

The figures below are examples taken from two Italian trade guides updated to mid-2026, useful for getting a sense of the proportions between one route and another. They are not price lists, nor bands that hold everywhere: the real quote depends on the volume of the part, its shape, the material, the quantity and who makes it for you, and it can fall well outside these ranges.

The first route is a maker near you. Usually the cheapest for a private individual, and for a small, simple part you see asking prices of around 10 euros, often collected in person along with a chat about how to improve it. You find them in local groups, on fablab noticeboards and in a few area directories. The advantage nobody counts is a real person telling you whether the part should be turned round or reinforced so it does not break again in the same spot.

The second is a fablab. These are workshops open to the public, often run as associations, where you use the machines yourself after a short induction. The commonest arrangement is an annual membership fee, which in the cases you find published runs from a few tens of euros to a hundred or so, and then either free access or an hourly rate. Fablab Torino, to take a published example, charges 5 euros an hour for the 3D printer, material included. Italy has no single register of them, but the Fondazione Make in Italy and the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s makerspace directory are two good starting points for finding one nearby. This is the right route if curiosity is part of the reason you are here.

The third is an online service. You upload the file, choose the material, it arrives at your door. The quote is automatic and immediate. It costs more: for a single part of fifty grams or so it is not unusual to reach a few tens of euros including postage, partly because almost all of them apply a minimum order. It is worth it when you need several copies of the same part, and when you need a technical material that cannot be printed at home, sintered nylon for a gear that has to take real load, say.

The fourth is a print shop or copy shop. Handy because they are round the corner, but the choice of material is thin and the price tends to be higher than a maker’s, in the order of a few tens of euros for the kind of part we are talking about. It makes sense if you are in a hurry and none of the other three routes is within reach.

To give the full scale, that same part printed at home by somebody who already has the printer is less than a euro of plastic. The jump in price comes from the time of a person and a machine, not from the material. One of the two guides quoted gives, as an order of magnitude for a service, a rate per gram of around ten times the cost of the material, and inside that are the machine’s depreciation, the preparation work and the risk of the print failing and having to be done again.

Choosing the material without getting it wrong

They will ask you, and the wrong answer is the commonest reason a part breaks again after a month.

• PLA: rigid, precise, cheap. Perfect for mounts, organisers, objects that sit still indoors. It softens at modest temperatures, so keep it away from anything that stays in a car in summer or sits near a heat source.
• PETG: generally tougher than PLA and less sensitive to heat, with good impact resistance. It is a frequent choice for spares that have to work, but it is not the right answer regardless: for a part that has to flex many times, or that sits in the sun, or that has to stay rigid under load, the choice changes.
• ABS and ASA: more resistant to heat. ASA stands up well to sunlight and is the one to ask for outdoors, a bracket on a balcony for instance.
• Polyamide (nylon) from powder: another category altogether, from an industrial service, with two different processes you will see referred to as SLS and MJF. Both start from polyamide powder, but the way they fuse it is not the same, and the finish, the cost and the way the part behaves all change with it, so ask the service which of the two it offers and why. Either way you get sturdy parts, without the layers typical of filament, suitable for gears and mechanical components.
• Metal: it exists, it costs a great deal more and it almost always only makes sense in a professional setting.

The rule of thumb, to be taken as a starting point and not as a verdict, goes like this. If the part sits still and indoors, PLA; if it takes heat or sun, ASA; if it has to absorb knocks or flexing, PETG; if it has to transmit a real force, talk to a service and tell them how it will be used. The information that genuinely helps whoever is advising you is four things: what temperature it sees, what load it takes, whether it is outdoors, and whether it has to bend.

The two things to check before ordering

The first is the model’s licence. If you downloaded the file from an archive, check what licence it is published under. Many are non-commercial Creative Commons, and there printing one for yourself is perfectly fine, making copies to sell on is not. And watch out for a distinction that slips past people, because the licence concerns the file, not the object it represents. A model of a protected character stays protected even if the file is free.

The second is the end use. Two cases deserve attention.

Contact with food. A compliant filament does not automatically make the finished object compliant. What also counts is the additives and colourants, the nozzle used (brass ones can contain lead), the cleanliness of the machine and contamination from materials printed before, the surface finish, which if it is very rough is harder to clean, and the intended use, because a tray at room temperature is not a container for hot or fatty food. If the part has to touch food regularly, say so to whoever prints it and weigh it up together, or else choose a container made for the purpose.

Then the parts that carry a load. It is not true that 3D printing cannot make structural parts, it is used in aeronautics too. What is true is that a household part designed by eye, printed in a material chosen out of habit and with no verification at all, must not be used where a sudden failure could injure somebody: above a person’s head, on a bicycle, on a ladder, on a pressurised system. There you need real engineering, or the original part.

Something worth more than the part

Once you have had your first spare printed, it is easy to notice that the same logic applies to half the house. The missing clip, the extension for the vacuum cleaner hose, the divider for the cutlery drawer, the kitchen phone stand made to fit your own phone.

It is also one of the few concrete ways of not throwing out a working appliance because of a five-gram piece of plastic. So, next time you are about to order a new one, take a proper look at what has broken and measure it first.