When the organizers of a regional engineering competition needed custom trophies for their 2025 awards ceremony, they turned to 3D printing. The brief was ambitious: 48 unique trophies, each personalized with the recipient's name and achievement, delivered in three weeks, with a finish that looked genuinely premium — not like a plastic prototype.

The project landed with a small Houston-based fabrication studio that had recently started working with QTS Metal PLA. What followed was a case study in how the right material can transform what's possible with desktop 3D printing.

The Brief: Premium Finish, Tight Deadline

Traditional trophy manufacturing — cast metal, engraved plaques — would have taken 6–8 weeks and cost several thousand dollars for a custom run of 48. The organizers had three weeks and a budget of under $800 for materials and fabrication.

The studio's initial instinct was to use standard silver PLA and paint the trophies. But the client wanted a metallic finish that would hold up to handling and look good in photographs. Paint on FDM prints rarely achieves that without extensive priming and sanding — time they didn't have.

Why Metal PLA Changed the Equation

QTS Metal PLA contains fine metallic particles suspended in the PLA matrix. When printed and lightly post-processed, the surface has a genuine metallic luster — not a painted-on effect, but actual metallic particles at the surface. The studio tested three colors from the QTS range: White Aluminium, Pearl Dark Grey, and Pearl Gold.

The key discovery was that a simple hand-buff with a microfiber cloth after printing dramatically enhanced the metallic appearance. No primer, no paint, no spray coating — just the printed part, buffed for about 30 seconds per trophy.

Production Workflow

Print Settings Used

• Printer: Bambu Lab X1C
• Nozzle: 0.4mm hardened steel (recommended for metal-particle filaments)
• Hotend temp: 225°C
• Bed temp: 60°C
• Speed: 200mm/s (outer walls at 100mm/s for surface quality)
• Layer height: 0.15mm for top surfaces, 0.2mm for infill
• Infill: 20% gyroid

The Result

The client was delighted. The trophies photographed beautifully, and several recipients commented that they assumed the trophies were cast metal until they picked them up. Total material cost for 48 trophies: approximately $340 (7 spools of QTS Metal PLA at various colors). Total fabrication time: 15 days, well within the three-week window.

The studio has since taken on two additional trophy and award projects using the same workflow, and has added Metal PLA to their standard material offering for client projects.