Buy It Printed, or Print It Yourself?

Every rack in our range comes two ways: printed & shipped — we print it to order in your colour in Melbourne and post it Australia-wide — or as an STL pack, the exact same production files as an instant download you print on your own machine. Same geometry, same hidden drawers, same tested tolerances. The only question is who runs the printer.

There's no wrong answer, and we're happy either way — so here's the honest comparison.

Price comparison — every model, both ways

All prices in AUD from our own store. "You save" is the upfront sticker difference — remember the STL side still needs your filament and printer time (covered below).

What printing it yourself actually takes

The sticker saving is real, but it isn't free — here's the honest cost of the DIY side:

• A printer. Any modern FDM machine with a roughly 25 × 25 cm bed covers the whole range — we develop and test everything on Bambu Lab printers. No resin, no exotic hardware.
• Filament. Standard PLA. Budget half a 1 kg spool for the smaller racks up to about a full spool for the biggest models — call it AU$10–30 of material per rack at typical spool prices.
• Time. An overnight print for the small stuff, up to a weekend of printer time for the big multi-part models. The printer works alone — but it's your machine that's tied up.
• Small hardware. The magnetic-drawer racks need a few 8 × 2 mm neodymium magnets (a couple of dollars online); counts and placement are in each pack's guide.
• Zero support headaches. Every design in the range prints 100% support-free — that's a design rule here, not a marketing line. Full print settings and an assembly guide ship inside every pack.

Rule of thumb: on a mid-size rack you come out roughly $20–35 ahead printing it yourself after filament — more every time you print a second copy, a spare drawer or an extra shelf, because the files are yours to reprint forever (personal use).

The same files, either way

One thing we want to be clear about: the STL packs aren't a lite version. They're exported from the exact production geometry we print and sell — the same hidden drawers, the same tolerances, the same modular connectors. When we improve a design, the pack gets the update too. If your print doesn't come out right, the included settings sheet is what our own printers run.