PolyJet / material jetting machine guide
Every setting that lives on a PolyJet / material jetting machine - what it is, what it does to a price, and what a typical value looks like. This mirrors the machine editor field for field.
A machine in Quotometry is a real machine in your shop. It carries its own hourly rate, its own build volume and its own speeds, and a part is priced on the machine it would actually run on - not on an average of everything you own.
You can have as many as your plan allows, and several configurations can share them through the Library. If you buy another one of the same model, copy it and change the name.
Every setting on this page
These are in the same order as the editor, with the same help text. Each one has an anchor, and the ? beside a field in your console links straight to it - so if you are reading this because you clicked one, the setting you were looking at is highlighted.
Machine: tray & heads
Printhead familysystembasic
Whose cartridges the machine takes.
Price: No direct price effect: it decides which materials run on it.
Typical: PolyJet.
Mixes digital materialsdigital_materials
Whether the machine jets two resins at once to make a digital material such as Digital ABS.
Price: No direct price effect: digital materials are only offered on machines that can mix them.
Typical: On for J8 and Connex machines.
Layer thicknesslayer_mm
The layer thickness the machine prints at.
Price: Divides the part height into layers; every layer costs a sweep of the heads.
Typical: 0.014-0.032 mm.
Fixed time per layerlayer_base_scalibratable
Roller, UV lamp and return time on every layer, however little of the tray is used.
Price: Multiplied by the layer count: the reason a tall part is slow even on its own.
Typical: 2-5 s.
This is one of the numbers the calibration tool can fit from jobs you have already run, so you do not have to guess it.
Time per passlayer_per_pass_sbasiccalibratable
One sweep of the print block across the tray.
Price: A tray filled further across needs more passes per layer, so a fuller tray takes longer per layer and less per part.
Typical: 2-4 s.
This is one of the numbers the calibration tool can fit from jobs you have already run, so you do not have to guess it.
Width per passhead_width_mm
How wide a strip of the tray one pass prints.
Price: Sets how many passes a layer needs for the width of tray the batch occupies.
Typical: 50-100 mm.
Warm-up per traywarmup_s
Heating and purging the heads before the first layer.
Price: Machine time charged once per tray.
Typical: 300-900 s.
Spacing between partspart_spacing_mm
Gap kept between parts on the tray.
Price: A bigger gap fits fewer parts on a tray, so each carries more of the tray's fixed cost.
Typical: 3-6 mm.
Tray utilisation captray_utilisation_pct
The most of the tray you fill.
Price: Below 100 % each part carries a larger share of the tray.
Typical: 80-90 %.
Model purge per traypurge_g_per_tray
Model material purged and wiped off the heads during a tray.
Price: Charged as waste of the model material, shared by the parts on the tray.
Typical: 5-20 g.
Support purge per traysupport_purge_g_per_tray
Support material purged during a tray.
Price: Charged as waste of the support material, shared by the parts on the tray.
Typical: 3-10 g.
Printhead life (0 = untracked)printhead_life_h
How many hours of jetting a set of printheads lasts. 0 means you do not track it.
Price: Spreads the cost of a head set over the trays that wore it out, as the consumable `material_jetting.printhead`.
Typical: 2 000-5 000 h.
Wiper life (0 = untracked)wiper_life_trays
How many trays a head wiper lasts. 0 means you do not track it.
Price: Charged per tray as the consumable `material_jetting.wiper`.
Typical: 30-100 trays.