Case studies

What people actually build on these machines

Machines, materials, part counts and what went wrong. Written up from operators and engineers running Original Prusa hardware in production.

Start here

Two long interviews with operators running fleets
Print farmsNew interview

How Zac Hartley runs 70 Prusa printers

A working farm operator on throughput, failure rate and staffing. What he buys, what breaks, and what he keeps on the shelf.

  • 70printers running
  • 90 to 95%print success
  • 2full-time operators
Read the write-up
EducationFleet build-out

How UCalgary runs a 70-plus printer fleet for 3,000 engineering students a year

Eight years of growth from 20 printers to a campus fleet, and how the makerspace keeps it running for a queue of undergraduates.

  • 70+printers on site
  • 3,000engineering students a year
  • 4XLs
Read the write-up

Every case study

9 write-ups
Defense

$2.50 a part: the Army case behind the 173rd Airborne's printers

A serving officer sets out what his brigade prints today and the Army precedent he uses to argue for printing spares at the tactical edge.

  • 284caps printed
  • 1,472days recovered
  • $2.50per part
Read the write-up
Aerospace

SHARK.AERO prints over 100 of the 200 parts in each aircraft

A Czech-Slovak aircraft maker on which parts it prints, which materials it trusts near the engine, and the tooling that never reaches the aircraft.

  • 100+printed parts each
  • 100work hours saved
  • 3aircraft a month
Read the write-up
Space

TRL Space qualified a printed deployer part at 0.25% outgassing

A Brno space company and Prusa put a printable polycarbonate through ESA outgassing and ESD testing, then used it in a CubeSat deployer. It beat all four of the requirements the analysis set.

  • 0.25%total mass loss, 1% limit
  • 0.00%CVCM, 0.1% limit
  • 0.12%recovered mass loss
Read the write-up
Education

The Berlin makerspace where one tenant runs 20 Prusa printers

A community innovation hub with a shared Prusa bench, and a hardware company on site printing 12 functional parts into every product it ships.

  • 20printers, one tenant
  • 12printed parts each
  • 5tool heads on the XL
Read the write-up
Medical

IKEM prints 4 to 6 kidneys a month before transplant surgery

A Prague transplant institute prints full-scale organ models from CT data so surgeons can find the complications before the operation starts.

  • 4 to 6models a month
  • 12 to 18 hprint time each
  • 2printers
Read the write-up
MaterialsEngineering materials

Angel Aerial prints whole airframes in ASA on five HT90s

A Cincinnati drone maker moved airframe production in-house on high-temperature printers and stopped buying parts from a service bureau.

  • 5Prusa Pro HT90s
  • $20,000saved in year one
  • 90 °Cchamber temperature
Read the write-up
Print farms

The room where 800 printers do nothing but print printer parts

Prusa Research's own farm, documented from the inside: what it prints, what it consumes, how many people it takes and what gets scrapped.

  • 800+printers running today
  • 27 hper parts set
  • 24/7since 2017
Read the write-up
Submit your story

Running Prusa hardware in production?

Tell us what you print and how many machines it takes. We write it up and you approve every word before it goes live.

Send it to us