Service bureau: A service bureau is a company that makes parts on demand for other businesses and individuals, most often by 3D printing, from files its customers upload or send.
A service bureau runs machines that many customers cannot justify buying: industrial SLS and MJF systems, resin printers, metal printers, sometimes CNC alongside them. Customers send a file, choose a material and finish, and receive parts.
The work has a distinctive shape. Orders are many and small, from engineers, designers, hobbyists and companies outsourcing overflow. Files arrive in every format and condition. Buyers expect a price quickly, often online. And for powder processes, many customers’ parts share one build, so the price of each depends on how much of the build it uses, its build share.
Example: an SLS bureau nests parts from 15 orders into one overnight build. Each order is charged for its share of the build volume and powder, plus its own handling and finishing.
A service bureau and a job shop are close cousins, and many shops are both. The difference is mostly in volume of orders and how they come in: bureaus usually depend on instant quotes and online ordering, while job shops often work from RFQs and long-standing customers. A print farm is a bureau built around many low-cost printers.
See how Quotometry fits service bureaus, or read starting a 3D printing business.
Go deeper: Starting a 3D printing service business: machines, pricing, channels, the first year