Reduced Aircraft Factory LLC is run by a single proprietor who designs the models, paint schemes, and the web pages you’re looking at now. When an order is received, a copy of that order is sent automatically to the 3D-printing firm shop3d.io, one of the very few providers of drop-ship full-color 3D prints. (The printer for the full-color models costs US$30,000 or more.)
shop3d.io shows these states for their order status:
- Paid — the money has been transferred and order received, but it is not yet queued for printing.
- Accepted — the order is in the queue to be printed.
- Producing — the models are being printed and packaged.
- Shipping — the order has been shipped to the customer but is not yet marked as received. Upon request, a tracking URL may be available at this stage.
- Completed — the order has been received by the customer.
I wish there were more detail, but that is the level of granularity that is available. Note that orders can stay in the Accepted (queued) stage for several weeks, because the factory is busy with existing orders or because they’re waiting for a full print-tray worth of orders (so the printing is cost-effective). Orders can stay in “Producing” stage for a week or two if there is a mix of full-color and single-color models, since those can be printed at different times. It might also happen that (say) three of four models in an order printed successfully but the fourth had issues, and it is queued for a reprint. Finally, if an order contains both Resin and Nylon models, the printing and shipping times for those types can differ because those two types of models are produced at different physical facilities with separate queues.
It cannot be closely predicted when an order will move from one stage to the next. That is why there is such very wide range — 3 weeks to 3 months — on the order-to-delivery interval.
It would be great if orders could be fulfilled within just a couple weeks or if I could relay exactly why an order is in this stage or that stage, but the realities of full-color 3D-printing mean that the timelines are more unpredictable and protracted. Maybe that will get better as the technology matures.