Buy a 3D printer or order printing: what pays off in Georgia

What your own printer really costs

The printer price is only the start. The full kit for someone who wants finished parts rather than a new hobby looks like this:

• Printer: 1,200–1,500 ₾ for a Bambu Lab A1 mini, 2,500–3,500 ₾ for an A1/P1S. Cheaper — a Creality Ender at 700–900 ₾, but the first month goes into tuning it.
• Filament: 60 ₾ per kilogram of PLA. The first 2–3 spools go into trials and failed prints.
• Consumables: nozzles, build plate, glue, support-removal tools — 100–200 ₾ in the first year.
• Time: 20–40 hours to learn the slicer, calibrate and get through the first failures. The biggest and most invisible line item.
• Space and noise: a printer runs 3–8 hours per part, ABS smells, and the enclosure takes a corner of the room.

What ordering a print costs

In our calculator the price is made of part weight, print time and setup. The minimum order is 35 ₾. For reference: a typical household spare of 20–80 g costs 35–60 ₾, a 12 cm figurine — 35 ₾, a large vase or a 300 g enclosure — about 90–130 ₾. Next-day delivery in Tbilisi, 2–3 days across Georgia.

No filament, no settings, no scrap: if a part comes out defective, we reprint it at our expense.

Break-even: when the printer pays for itself

Take a Bambu Lab A1 mini at 1,400 ₾ plus 300 ₾ of filament and consumables in year one — 1,700 ₾. Our average print order is 50 ₾. So the printer pays for itself on the 34th part, not counting your time. Counting even 20 ₾ per hour for 30 hours of learning — on the 46th.

The practical conclusion: if you need fewer than 30–40 parts a year, ordering is cheaper. If you print every week, the printer pays off within a year and then it is yours.

When buying a printer makes sense

• You actually want the hobby: modeling, experimenting with materials, printing every week.
• You have a child of 10+ and want to give them an engineering toy — one of the best investments in a kid’s curiosity.
• You make a product in series and print hundreds of identical parts a month — then your own machine beats any service.
• You need prototype iterations every day, and half a day waiting for a courier breaks the workflow.

When ordering is the better deal

• You need one part or a few per year: a handle broke, a mount cracked, a plug went missing.
• You need a material harder than PLA: ABS needs an enclosed chamber, TPU needs experience, PA-CF needs a special nozzle. Ours is already set up.
• You need it on time: a gift for a date, a part before the weekend. We print in 24–48 hours while you keep your evenings.
• You need a model that doesn’t exist yet: we have an artist who models from a photo or a sketch.

If you decide to buy anyway

Our honest advice for Georgia: a Bambu Lab A1 mini to start, or a P1S if you need ABS and an enclosed chamber. Both are sold in Tbilisi by local dealers with a warranty — buying from AliExpress to save 200 ₾ is not worth it, one warranty case eats the difference. And while the printer is on its way, you can order the part from us — the calculator is below.

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