SpoolIQ
User Guide

Getting Started

SpoolIQ connects the parts of running a 3D printing business that are usually tracked in separate spreadsheets: what you sell, what it’s made of, how it’s manufactured, and what filament it consumes.

This guide explains the core concepts and how they fit together. Each page covers one area in depth — this page is the map.

Try it without an account

Before setting up any Products, you can get a price estimate with the Quick Calculator — no account required. It accepts manual values (material cost, print time, machine costs) or a supported .gcode.3mf/.gcode-style production file; a dropped file is parsed locally in your browser and is never uploaded to SpoolIQ for this calculation. Market printer presets and manual filament pricing work without signing in; using your own saved filaments, printers, or sales-platform defaults requires an account. If you’re already signed in, the same link opens your account’s calculator instead, with those saved values available. Selecting a printer preset fills in its known power draw only — acquisition price and useful life (your amortization assumption) stay yours to set, since those depend on what you actually paid and how you want to recover the cost, not on the printer model itself.

The Quick Calculator works from aggregate costing inputs — total grams, total print time — rather than a structured Bill of Materials, and any “extra cost” line you add there is a simulation value, not a catalog Extra. Its results aren’t saved and don’t create a Product; setting up a real Product still goes through Products, Components & BOM.

The calculator also simulates what a sale actually nets you. Target Markup (%) is a markup on production cost — it defaults to 100%, meaning a target price of twice that cost. Alongside it, Payment Fee (%) and Fixed Payment Fee (€) simulate what a payment processor or marketplace takes; neither requires creating or saving a sales platform first, and the selling price is grossed up so your chosen markup still holds after those fees are deducted. If you’re signed in, selecting one of your saved sales platforms fills in both fee fields as a starting point — editing either fee afterward turns the estimate into a custom simulation rather than changing the saved platform.

The core objects

Product — the finished item you sell. A keychain, a miniature, a replacement part. See Products, Components & BOM.

Component — a physical part that goes into one or more Products. A Product’s Bill of Materials (BOM) lists which Components it needs, and how many of each. See Products, Components & BOM.

Production Profile — describes how a Component is actually manufactured: which printer it’s compatible with, how many units one print run produces, the print file, materials, and print time. A Component can have more than one Production Profile — for example, one tuned for a Snapmaker U1 and another for a Bambu P2S. See Production Profiles.

Production Order — represents demand: “make N units of this Product.” Behind the scenes it breaks down into demand for the Components that Product needs. It can be produced Automatically, or from an explicitly selected saved Product Production Recipe (strict intent). See Production Orders.

Print Job — a concrete, scheduled or started print of a specific Production Profile. This is where a Production Order’s demand actually becomes committed to one way of manufacturing a Component. See Production Orders.

Spool — physical filament inventory, tracked so you know what you have on hand and what a print actually consumed. See Inventory & Spools.

How they connect

Product ──(BOM)──► Component ──► Production Profile(s) ──► Print Job
                                                                │
Production Order ──(demand)───────────────────────────────────┘

When producing Automatically, a Production Order doesn’t lock in how a Component will be printed until a Print Job actually starts. Until then, you’re free to fix a bad print profile, add a corrected one, or otherwise adjust the production configuration without touching the Order itself. Alternatively, explicitly selecting a saved Product Production Recipe locks in its exact Profile/Plate choices as strict intent instead. Both paths are covered in detail in Production Orders.

Where to go next