Instant quote for sliced .3mf files (Bambu Studio / OrcaSlicer)

Most UK 3D-print services treat a sliced .3mf the same as any other file: drop it on a form, wait for someone to open it, write back with a price, then book the slot. Hark Tech doesn't. Drop a sliced .3mf at harktech.co.uk/printing.html and you get a firm price in seconds — multi-colour, multi-plate, per-plate selection, the lot. Here's how, and why almost nobody else does this at the platform level.

What "sliced" actually means

A .3mf file can be one of two things, and the difference matters for pricing.

A project file holds your objects laid out on plates with your printer profile, but no actual G-code yet — the slicer hasn't simulated the toolpath. Open the file, click "Slice all plates", and only then does it know how many grams of filament each plate uses and how long each will take. A project-file .3mf without that pass is just geometry. We can still quote it from the mesh (the tool falls back to a geometry estimate), but the price will be approximate, not slicer-verified.

A sliced file has all of that baked in: per-plate weight in grams, predicted print time in seconds, per-filament colour breakdown, plate previews — everything the slicer learned during simulation. Drop one of those in the quote tool and the price you see is calculated directly from the numbers your slicer produced. No guesswork.

Exporting a sliced .3mf from Bambu Studio

1. Lay your part(s) out on the plate(s) and pick your filaments as usual. 2. Hit Slice all plates in the top toolbar. Wait until every plate finishes — weight and time appear in the bottom-right corner once it's done. 3. File → Export → Export plate sliced file for a single plate, or Export all plate sliced files for multi-plate jobs (recommended — keeps everything in one upload). 4. Save the .3mf and upload that file.

The gotcha that catches most people: "Save Project As" does not include slicer output. It saves the layout and your settings, but the embedded slice data is empty. When the quote tool opens it, it sees a project file, not a sliced one, and falls back to a geometry estimate. If you've clicked "Slice all plates" and the price tool still tells you the file looks unsliced, that's almost always why. Use the Export menu, not Save Project As.

<!-- SCREENSHOT TODO (Grant to capture): Bambu Studio top toolbar with the "Slice all plates" button highlighted --> <img src="" alt="Bambu Studio toolbar with the Slice all plates button highlighted" />

<!-- SCREENSHOT TODO: Bambu Studio File menu open showing Export → Export plate sliced file --> <img src="" alt="Bambu Studio File menu showing Export then Export plate sliced file" />

Exporting a sliced .3mf from OrcaSlicer

Orca is a Bambu Studio fork, so the flow and the menu path are the same:

1. Slice all plates. 2. File → Export → Export plate sliced file (single plate) or Export all plate sliced files (multi-plate). 3. Upload that file.

Depending on your Orca version the exact wording can drift — look for the word "sliced" in the menu item. Avoid anything labelled "Save Project" or "Save As" for upload to a quote tool; those produce a project file without the embedded slicer output.

<!-- SCREENSHOT TODO: OrcaSlicer File → Export menu showing Export plate sliced file --> <img src="" alt="OrcaSlicer File menu showing the Export plate sliced file option" />

What the Hark Tech price tool does with it

When you drop a sliced .3mf at harktech.co.uk/printing.html:

1. The tool reads Metadata/slice_info.config from inside the file (a .3mf is just a zip) and pulls out per-plate weight in grams, predicted print time, and the colour assignments for every filament used. 2. It also pulls the per-plate thumbnails your slicer rendered, so you see exactly what's on each plate. 3. Each plate becomes a card with a checkbox. Untick the plates you don't want this time and the price updates immediately — handy when a community download bundles parts you don't need. 4. It prices per material: PLA Basic, matte PLA, silk PLA, PETG, ABS and TPU each have their own per-gram rate. Multi-filament plates are priced filament-by-filament, not at a blended average. 5. If your print uses more than one distinct filament, a single multi-colour setup fee is added (once per order — not per plate, not per filament). 6. Auto-quotes are capped: anything that prices above the cap drops into a manual-quote path with a same-day reply, so a printer slot is never committed without a human eye on the file.

If the file isn't actually sliced (Save Project As, MakerWorld downloads that were never sliced locally, etc.), you'll see an orange banner explaining what to re-export — but the tool still gives you a geometry-based estimate so you're not back to square one.

Why other services don't do this

Most UK and EU "instant 3D printing" services are aggregator marketplaces. They take your file and route it to whichever printer in their network is cheapest or nearest. That's a perfectly good model for volume, but it has a side-effect: the platform can't auto-price multi-colour or multi-material work, because it doesn't know which filament each downstream printer has loaded today, what brand it is, or what it cost. The safest answer at platform level is "send us a sliced file and we'll quote it manually." That's why almost every form you've filled in asks you to upload, then wait.

Hark Tech runs its own printers — a Creality K2 and a Bambu A1, both in-house — so we know exactly what filament we stock, what each material costs us per gram, and what each machine costs to run per hour. That's enough to price a sliced file the moment it lands. No network to coordinate with, no manual review queue, no email back-and-forth before you know what it costs.

Try it

If you've already got a sliced .3mf, drop it at harktech.co.uk/printing.html for an instant firm price. If you've only got a project file or an STL, the same tool quotes those too — slicing first just gives you a tighter price and the per-plate cherry-pick.

Whichever way you upload, you pay through Stripe, the print enters the queue immediately, and it ships back tracked. No quote form in sight.