Case study · Northgate Prototyping

Less typing. More printing.

A busy 3D print shop with over 12 printers, one owner and part-time help. How it stopped retyping quotes and answering "where's my order?", in its own numbers.

Northgate Prototyping is a stand-in name. The shop is real, and so are its story and numbers. Every number below says where it came from.

At a glance

Parts for engineers, on a busy floor.

Who: a small shop printing jigs and fixtures, brackets, medical models and replacement parts for rail cars.

Floor: over 12 printers. Mostly FDM, resin when the detail matters, and one large-format machine for the big stuff.

Team: the owner, plus part-time help on the floor.

Before: quotes typed by hand, files in folders, and an inbox full of status questions.

46% → 15%quote error, before and after pricing learned from the shop's finished jobs
290+order updates emailed automatically in 90 days
1 to 2 h a dayback for real work, by the owner's own estimate

The problem

The printing was fine. Everything around it wasn't.

Quotes

Every quote typed by hand

Each request meant opening the file, guessing a print time, working out the material and writing the email. The work was coming in faster than the quotes were going out.

Files

Half the requests had no file

About half of quote requests came in with no file attached. Chasing them ate the afternoon, and the files that did come lived in folders nobody could find.

Customers

"Where's my order?"

Most of the shop's money comes from people who order again, so every status email and call got answered. That was a lot of time spent telling people things a page could tell them.

What changed

One place for the quote, the job and the customer.

01 · Quote page

Customers price their own files

A customer drops a file on the shop's quote page, picks a material and sees a price. The shop checks it and sends it, or lets it go out on its own. A request with no file gets a link to send one, and the file lands on the order.

02 · The floor

Files on the order, slicing done for you

The part-time help looks an order up and the files are right there. A small PC in the shop slices each job and gets it ready for a free printer. Every box gets a QR code, and a scan moves the order along.

03 · Customers

A tracking page and an email at each step

Customers see their parts, progress and invoice on one page, and get an email when the order is confirmed, printing, done and shipped. Nobody has to write those.

The results

90 days, counted from the shop's data.

Read straight from the shop's account. Nothing here is estimated.

July 11 to October 9, 2026.

Before and after

What the owner's day looks like now.

BeforeWith Layers3D
QuotingTyped by hand, one email at a timeThe customer prices the file on the quote page; the shop checks it
Quote accuracy46% off on average15% off on average, learned from finished jobs
Missing filesChased by emailA link to send it, and it lands on the order
SlicingBy hand, job by jobDone by a PC in the shop: 200+ jobs in 90 days
Order updatesWritten when someone askedSent on their own: 290+ in 90 days
"Where's my order?"An email or a call to the shopThe customer opens the tracking page
"I love that I can check my order and see exactly how far along it is. It's really easy to follow, from paying to knowing who to reach out to."
A Northgate customer

Where the numbers come from

Counted, not guessed.

Shop data

The 90-day counts

Quote requests, automatic order updates and sliced jobs were counted from the shop's own account for July 11 to October 9, 2026.

Re-quoting

46% → 15%

The shop's past jobs were priced again, leaving each job out in turn, and compared with what they really took. Same numbers as the ROI page.

The owner

1 to 2 hours a day

The owner's own estimate of time handed back. It is the one number here that wasn't counted, so we say so.

Your shop next

Run your own quotes through it.

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