Packaging
What arrives in the box, how X3D parcels are sized and rated, what postage covers, drop-shipping to your own customer, and designing parts that survive transit.
Every X3D order is packed by hand in Austin, Texas and posted from there. This page covers what actually goes in the box, how the parcel is sized and rated, what you can change about it, and how to have parts sent to someone other than yourself. It also covers the part of packaging you control: geometry that survives a courier.
The short version — parts go into a plain box with no paperwork, postage is a flat rate that does not move with size or weight, and the ship-to address is whatever you put on the order.
What arrives#
- The parts, boxed in plain corrugated.
- Nothing else. There is no packing slip, no invoice and no printed insert in the box by default.
- A carrier label showing the X3D Studios return address in Austin, Texas.
Your paperwork is electronic: a receipt email when the order is paid, a shipping email carrying the tracking number, and the order page at /orders, which shows each order's material, colour, quality, size and quantity alongside its tracking number. The fuller work order — scale, infill, colour count and billable grams — goes to the operator who prints it, not to your order page.
The parcel#
Prints from /print and the store go out in a house-standard parcel: a 6 x 6 x 6 inch box declared at 1 lb. That is the parcel X3D declares to the carrier when a batch of labels is bought. It is a standard rather than a measurement — the carrier re-rates on real weight, and an oversized part gets the box it needs.
Farm jobs shipped from the dashboard are rated differently, because they are rated live. The shipment weight is the sum of the parts plus a 50 g packaging allowance, the parcel is declared at 10 x 8 x 6 inches, and the total is the carrier rate plus a $3 handling fee per shipment. Rates come back from UPS and FedEx by preference, sorted fastest first.
| Route | What you pay for postage | Carrier |
|---|---|---|
| Order at /print or /store | $7 flat US, free over $50. $30 flat international, free over $500. | Bought as a batch after the parts are packed. Tracking is emailed at the shipped stage. |
| Farm shipment from the dashboard | Live carrier rate on parts weight + 50 g, plus a $3 handling fee. | UPS or FedEx where available, three-day service or faster, sorted by speed. |
| Collect in person | $0. No label is bought. | The shipment is recorded as a manual delivery and marked shipped immediately. |
Between the printer and the box#
A finished print is not a collectable print. Parts release from a PEI plate when the bed contracts on cooling; pulled warm, they either will not come off or they deform. So a job that finishes is held, fans running, until the machine reports a removal temperature.
| Material | Bed target | Chamber target |
|---|---|---|
| PLA, PETG, TPU, PVA | 35 C | not checked |
| ABS, ASA | 45 C | 40 C |
| PA / nylon, PC | 50 C | 45 C |
| Anything unrecognised | 45 C | 40 C |
After that, the order moves through five customer-visible stages: placed, printed, packed, shipped, delivered. Printed and shipped and delivered email you by default; packed does not, because it is an internal milestone with nothing for you to act on. The tracking number arrives with the shipped email.
Designing for transit#
Packing protects a part from the box. It does not protect a part from itself. A printed part is weakest across its layer lines, and a courier will find that plane. The cheapest protection is geometry.
- Thin unsupported spikes, antennae, blade edges and outstretched limbs are what actually breaks. Thicken them, fillet them where they meet the body, or model them as separate pieces that press-fit after delivery.
- Keep the load path off the layer boundary. A tab printed flat on the plate is far stronger than the same tab printed standing up.
- Give thin walls a real thickness. Below about 1.2 mm you are relying on two perimeters and nothing else.
- Fillet sharp internal corners. They are stress risers in a printed part exactly as they are in a moulded one.
- Pick the plastic for the journey, not just the look. PLA is stiff and brittle and chips at edges; PETG takes an impact and bends first; ASA and ABS survive heat in a parked van; TPU does not break at all, it deforms.
- For a tall, slender part, print it in two pieces and post it flat. A 300 mm mast in a box is a lever arm.
Branded, blank, or your own inserts#
Everything ships blank today. There is no self-serve option for a printed insert, a branded box, your own packing slip or a different return address, and nothing in the ordering flow accepts one. The label carries the X3D Studios return address in Austin.
For a resale or fulfilment arrangement — your inserts in the box, your return address on the label, or a specific box standard for a repeating part — that is arranged directly rather than through the site. Talk to us at /contact with your volume and what you need enclosed.
Drop-shipping to your customer#
There is no separate drop-ship product. The order carries whatever recipient and address you submit, so drop-shipping is just putting your customer's address on the order instead of your own. One order carries one destination, so one order per customer.
/api/print/ordersAPI keySubmit a print with the recipient and ship-to address on the request. Billed to the card on file.
recipientNamestringrequired- Who the parcel is addressed to. Accepted as name as well.
street1stringrequired- Street address. Accepted as address1 as well.
street2stringoptional- Suite, unit or apartment. Accepted as address2 as well.
citystringrequired- City.
statestringrequired- State or province.
zipstringrequired- Postal code. Accepted as postalCode as well.
countrystringoptionaldefaultUS- Two-letter country code. This route accepts US plus CA, GB, AU, DE, FR, IN, NL, IE, NZ, SE, IT, ES and MX. Anything else is rejected with a 400. The web checkout accepts a longer list, so an address that works in the cart may not work here.
emailstringoptional- Where the confirmation goes. Defaults to the email on the API key, so leave it off to keep your customer out of X3D's mail and keep the order confirmation yourself.
notestringoptional- Free text, up to 1000 characters, stored on the order and shown to the operator who packs it.
curl -X POST https://x3dstudios.com/api/print/orders \
-H "Authorization: Bearer x3d_live_YOUR_KEY" \
-F "[email protected]" \
-F "recipientName=Dana Reyes" \
-F "street1=1100 Congress Ave" \
-F "street2=Apt 4B" \
-F "city=Austin" \
-F "state=TX" \
-F "zip=78701" \
-F "country=US" \
-F "material=petg" \
-F "quantity=2" \
-F "note=Fragile clip on the long edge - pack that side up"The response carries an order code and a status URL. Track it from there rather than from your own inbox, since the confirmation email follows the email field and you will usually want that left as your own account.