The material menu on the quote form is short on purpose. Five options cover almost everything that comes through the shop, and picking the wrong one is easy to do from the names alone. Here is what each is actually for.

Standard grey

The default, and the right answer more often than people expect. Grey is the easiest surface to read detail on — no glare, no color casting shadows into recesses — which is why prototypes and presentation models are photographed in it. It takes primer and paint cleanly, and it reads as a model rather than as a toy.

Pick it if the part is going to be painted, photographed, or examined closely. Pick it if you are not sure.

Black

Black is grey's counterpart for parts that stay unpainted. Deep shadow hides the faint evidence of layers better than any other color, so a finished piece that goes straight from the box to a shelf often looks more finished in black.

The tradeoff is the same property in reverse: black swallows fine detail under most lighting. If somebody needs to inspect the geometry, or you are going to paint it anyway, grey shows more.

Clear

Clear resin handles anything that light has to pass through — glazing in an architectural model, water features, lenses, light pipes, a part where you want to see the inside.

One honest caveat: clear comes off the printer translucent, not glass-clear. True transparency is a finishing job — sanding through grits and polishing, or a coat that fills the surface. It is achievable and we can do it; it is just work, so say so up front if optical clarity is the point rather than a nice bonus.

Castable wax

A specialist material with one job: patterns that burn out of an investment mold and leave nothing behind. Jewelers use it to print a design, cast it in metal, and skip carving a wax by hand.

Do not choose it for anything you intend to keep. It is formulated to disappear cleanly in a kiln, not to be durable on a desk. If you want a metal ring, this is the material. If you want a resin ring, it is not. There is a whole article on the tradeoffs in castable resin vs. hand-carved wax, and printed ring and pendant patterns in the jewelry work.

Tough

Most resins are stiff, and stiff means brittle — a thin part snaps rather than bends. Tough resin trades some of that stiffness and some fine detail for the ability to take an impact and flex back.

Reach for it when the part has a job: a snap fit, a clip, a functional prototype somebody will actually handle, a piece with a thin projection that would otherwise break in the mail. Skip it when the part sits still and looks good, because standard grey will hold detail better.

A shortcut

Painting it? Standard grey.
Not painting it, and it goes on a shelf? Black.
Light has to get through? Clear.
Casting it in metal? Castable wax.
Somebody will bend, clip, or drop it? Tough.

Still deciding

Say what the part is for in the notes on your quote and we will pick with you, or call (239) 880-2698 and describe it. We would rather spend two minutes on the phone than print the right geometry in the wrong material.

Whichever you land on, every print is washed and UV post-cured in house before it goes anywhere — see what happens to your print before it ships.

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