What Happens When a Print Fails at PrintPort3D, and Who Pays

Anything that doesn’t come off the printer as a part we would ship. That includes:

• A print job that stops with an error on the printer.
• Spaghetti, a detached part or a failed first layer.
• Warping, layer shifts, or a part that has come loose from the plate partway through.
• A part that finishes but isn’t good enough to ship: stringing, blobs, a visible defect or the wrong colour.

Every one of these is our problem to solve. None of them becomes a charge, a message asking you to do something, or a delay you have to explain to anyone before it’s fixed.

1. 1

   The failure is logged against the exact part

   The failed job is recorded on the order item it belongs to, with the part, the print job and the attempt number, and our team gets an alert that points at it.
2. 2

   A person sends it back to print

   Someone on our team looks at the failure and sends the part back into the print queue. It’s a person’s decision, not an automatic loop, so a part that fails twice gets looked at rather than printed a third time the same way.
3. 3

   Your order keeps showing progress

   In your order book the order shows Reprinting, under In production. It isn’t listed as needing your attention, because it doesn’t.
4. 4

   Nothing is packed until everything has printed

   An order with a part still to print can’t move on to packing, so your customer never receives a partial order with the rest “to follow”.
5. 5

   It ships, and the charge doesn’t change

   You’re charged the make cost once for the order, the same amount you’d have paid if the first print had worked.

The first two rows are the ones this post is about, and they’re simple: a failure on our printers is ours. The rest need a person to look at the specifics, which is why they go through Support rather than a button that moves money automatically. The refunds and replacements guide covers each one in detail, and the Terms of Service are the binding version.

When something goes wrong after delivery, two separate amounts of money are involved, and they move in different places.

• Your customer’s money was paid to you, through your store. If they’re owed a refund, you give it from your store’s dashboard. We never see or touch that payment.
• The make cost is what we charged your card to make the order. If you think you shouldn’t have paid it, choose Request refund on the order and our team reviews it. The most that can come back is the make cost that was charged.

A person reviews each request, so it is not instant. It is the one money action you can start yourself, and it can never send back more than was charged.

A reprint is free, but it isn’t instant. The part goes back into the queue and prints again, which can add anything from an hour to a day depending on the part.

We aim to ship every order within 3 business days of when it was placed, and a reprint doesn’t reset that clock. Orders that run past it are marked Late in our queue and printed first. If you tell buyers a processing time, leave room for the occasional reprint rather than promising the fastest case.

Most repeat failures start in the file: thin walls, big overhangs, tall parts on small footprints. The design check catches those before they reach any printer. If you print some listings yourself and want us to make the rest, here is how overflow works.