A 3D printed business card with a QR code

By Tiehl Roberto Matías · 7 min read · Updated 27 October 2026

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The 3D printed business card is one of the most requested things and one of the worst turned out, because the size of a card and the minimum size of a printable module are much closer together than they look. Here is the whole sum, with figures from this site's own encoder, and an honest answer on when it is worth it.

The space left for the code

A business card is 85 × 55 mm. It is the size it has always been, the one that fits a wallet and a card holder, and it is the one almost everybody wants to reproduce in plastic.

Of those 85 × 55, the code cannot eat the whole card. The short side rules: 55 mm of height, minus a decent margin top and bottom, leaves about 45 mm at most. And if you also want your name and what you do to fit — which is the reason a card exists at all — the realistic square comes out between 20 and 30 mm.

That number, 20 to 30 mm, is the one to put into the sum. Not the 85.

The sum, with numbers

The size of each module comes out of a division: the side of the square shared between the modules of the code plus the eight of the margin. This table is worked out with this site's encoder, at correction H, which is what it comes set to.

What you put in the code	Characters	Version	20 mm square	25 mm	30 mm
Short domain	17	3	0.54 mm	0.68 mm	0.81 mm
Short redirect of your own	19	3	0.54 mm	0.68 mm	0.81 mm
WhatsApp, the number only	27	4	0.49 mm	0.61 mm	0.73 mm
Website with a path	38	5	0.44 mm	0.56 mm	0.67 mm
LinkedIn profile	49	6	0.41 mm	0.51 mm	0.61 mm
Minimal vCard	68	8	0.35 mm	0.44 mm	0.53 mm
Full vCard	152	12	0.27 mm	0.34 mm	0.41 mm

Look at the right-hand column, which is the most favourable of them all: a 30 mm square, which already takes up more than half the height of the card. The best case gives 0.81 mm per module. The worst, 0.41.

What nozzle it takes

This is where the sum closes. The rule this site uses, explained in the minimum size guide, is that a module has to be at least twice the nozzle. Below that the printer cannot draw a square: it draws a smudge.

Nozzle	Minimum module	Does it fit on a card?
0.4 mm	0.8 mm	Only with a very short link and the square at 30 mm
0.6 mm	1.2 mm	No
0.8 mm	1.6 mm	No

Put the only way that is any use: with a 0.4 mm nozzle, a short domain and the square at 30 mm, it works out by one hundredth of a millimetre. Every other combination in this guide falls short.

With a resin printer the conclusion turns the other way round: with no nozzle, the minimum module drops so far that even a full vCard fits on the card. The numbers are in the resin guide.

Why a vCard never fits

The vCard is the format that stores the whole contact inside the code: name, company, phone, email and website. The phone recognises it and offers to save the contact directly, without opening any page. On paper it is exactly what you want on a card.

On plastic it is impossible, and the table above says why. A vCard with the normal details is 152 characters, which forces a version 12: 65 modules a side. In a 30 mm square that leaves 0.41 mm modules, exactly half what a 0.4 nozzle can print.

Trimming the vCard does not save the situation either. Cutting it to the bare minimum — name and phone, no company, no email and no website — it is still 68 characters and a version 8, with 0.53 mm modules. It still does not fit.

The way out is the usual one, and it is better than it sounds: the code carries a short link of your own, and that link leads to a page with the whole contact on it. It takes a quarter of the room, it can be changed the day your phone number changes, and it lets you count how many people scan it. It is explained in the link guide.

Weight, cost and what it is actually for

An 85 × 55 mm card, solid, with the same infill the generator on this site applies:

Thickness	Weight	Approximate time	Cards per 1 kg spool
0.8 mm	3.7 g	~10 min	269
1.0 mm	4.6 g	~13 min	215
1.2 mm	5.6 g	~16 min	179
1.6 mm	7.4 g	~21 min	134
2.0 mm	9.3 g	~26 min	107

Under 1 mm the card bends and snaps. Over 2 mm it stops looking like a card and looks like a counter. The sensible point is 1.2 mm.

With that in hand, the comparison is harsh: a decent paper card weighs half a gram and costs pennies at a print shop that will do you a thousand. A printed card weighs eleven times more, takes a quarter of an hour each, and you get 179 out of a whole spool.

And that is fine, as long as you know what it is for. A 3D printed card is not for handing out; it is for giving one. It works as an object the other person does not throw away: at a trade fair, in a meeting you want remembered, or as the calling card of a workshop that makes printed pieces for a living. To hand out a hundred in an afternoon, use paper.

How to make one that works

With all of the above, this is the recipe that does come out:

1. A 0.4 mm nozzle. In this format it is not optional.
2. A short link of your own. A brief domain with a path of one or two characters. No parameters, no vCard.
3. The square at 30 mm or more. If you have to steal room from the text, steal it: a code that does not read is no use at all, and a name can be read in smaller lettering.
4. The raised text outside the code. The generator's text band does not take a single module off the square, and that is where your name goes.
5. Two colours. On a piece this thin contrast is everything; relief on its own is not enough. The colour guide has the combinations that work.
6. Scan it before running the batch. One single test card, with somebody else's phone and in the light of the place where you are going to hand it over.

And if after all that the link still does not fit, the conclusion is not to force the card: it is to change the piece. A 40 mm keychain is carried around just as easily, reads without trouble and nobody throws it out two days later.