The 3D Printing Guys.
// Free guide // interactive edition

The AI-for-3DP Toolkit

Every AI, MCP and automation tool we run to punch above our headcount. Tick your stack, and copy our real prompts plus a setup prompt for every tool.

5layers
  • Brain
  • Visual and audio
  • 3D
  • Automation and scrape
  • Farm
~£225a month, core stack
  • ~£325 with the outreach tools on paid tiers
  • Under one part-time hire either way
  • Most of it starts free
50cards
  • Every tool we run
  • The ones we dropped, and why
  • The tools inside the paid tiers
2 minto your first tool
  • Search or tap a layer
  • Keep it open as a reference

Most of the tools on this page are free, free-tier or free-trial. Each carries a gold FREE badge and a line on how far the free route gets you.

How to use this
  1. Search, or tap a layer. Pick your money model if you want the core stack for your lane.
  2. Open a card. Tap Add to my stack on the ones you want; it turns navy and reads In my stack with a tick.
  3. Labels: the gold badge is the free route into the tool. Our prompt or Setup prompt means there is something to copy; Paid tool means it lives in the paid tiers.
  4. Every stack card has a Copy button: one of our real prompts, or the setup prompt that installs and tests the tool through your Claude.
  5. Tap Free to start to see only the free ones. Build the stack on free accounts, then pay for the two or three that earn it.

3D printing is 20% printing and 80% everything else: emails, quotes, chases, concept modelling, listing photos, invoicing, outreach, farm control. The traditional answer costs £6-12k a month in salaries.

This is the AI-native answer: a handful of tools, most free to start, and one operator doing the work of a small studio.

The AI-for-3DP Toolkit: my stack
// Optional: pick your money model

Three ways a 3D printing business makes money. Each leans on a different slice of the stack.

Pick your lane and the cards in its core stack get tagged. All three overlap on the glue (n8n) and the brain (Claude).

The toolkit

// The stack cost

If you started tomorrow

ToolMonthly

Under one part-time hire (~£1,200 a month) even at the ceiling. Doing the work of a small team.

Apollo, Hunter and Phantombuster all have usable free tiers. Run free until you hit the rate limits; you may never need to pay.

Some of it creeps closer to free if you spin up Gmail accounts for the free trials, which we neither suggest nor recommend.

// Where to next

You have the map. Three ways to use it.

This guide is the map; the community is the toolbox behind it. Pick whichever route fits where you are.

ROUTE 1

Build it yourself with Claude

Everything you need is on this page. Tick a tool, copy its setup prompt, paste it into your Claude and let it do the install: it asks you for what it needs first, then does the work and runs the test. Start with Claude Code and the CLAUDE.md starter; every other card plugs into that.

ROUTE 2

Do it by hand

Every tool here works without Claude driving it. Each tool's own site has the setup, and the full guide has how we use it written out. It just takes longer.

ROUTE 3

Want it done for you?

Inside 3D Printing University the free tier holds the working files: n8n workflow exports, the CLAUDE.md starter template, the day-plan template, the Nano Banana prompt library, the Whisper hotkey package, the NotebookLM source lists. The paid tiers hold the tools: the long instruction files you hand to your own Claude to do a whole job end to end (Launch for the eBay tools, Scale for the service and product tools), and the courses that teach them, filmed as we actually use them. Same community we built the whole stack inside.

the3dprintingguys.co.uk/skool

The community library has the current set of free guides, including one on each money model. Watch the stack in action: @the3dprintingguys on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

// Keep this

Save your stack

Ticks are saved on this device. Print or save as PDF to keep the cards you ticked, or copy a plain-text summary.

The 3D Printing Guys · What worked for us