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How do I determine how much an individual print costs?

I'd like an answer including support material, failed prints, and (ideally) wear and tear / printer maintenance costs.

To clarify, I'm not asking how to predict the cost before printing, but rather how to calculate the actual cost after printing. Though predicting the cost beforehand is useful as well.

Marsh
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5 Answers5

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For FDM printing:

Both Cura and Makerbot Desktop (and perhaps others I'm not as familiar with) will give you a preview of both the length and weight of your print, including supports/rafts. Once the print is done you can weigh it on a kitchen scale.

PLA Filament currently runs about \$23/kg on Amazon, which works out to \$0.023/g. Multiplication can then give you a good estimate of materials costs for a print.

Only experience with your specific printer will give you an idea of how often you're going to hit a failed print, and how often you're going to need to replace parts. For wear and tear you could try using a depreciation model of 2-3 years, but that's only an estimate.

Jon Ericson
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Jeff
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There are many factors that make up the cost of a print.

  • Filament base cost-calculate the cost per gram * number of grams used
  • Power used by the printer-power cost * time
  • Setup time for the printer-hourly cost * time
  • Print time (as you could be printing other objects)
  • Print area - you can run multiple prints at once
  • Chance of print failure - (1+ %of failure) * cost of materials and time
  • cost of printer (divided over expected prints
  • printer maintenance
  • profit margin
Eric Johnson
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If you have a Bambu Lab Printer and use Bambu Slicer you can set the filament to the cost of the roll, after you set that you can slice the print and it should show you towards the right how much the print will cost. If you made the model yourself, you should add labor costs too.

mhpullen
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There are many factors that come into the price of a print:

  • Material $(Cost_{\frac{Material}{kilogram}}*Print_{weight})$. Typically you can take the weight or lenght of the filament, use the material price per kilo and get to one part of the price.
  • Electricity $(Cost_{\frac{Electricity}{hour}}*Print_{time})$. A printer draws power from the grid any you pay for it. If you know the average draw of the printer, you can calculate the running electricity bill per hour.
  • Printer depriciation $(Cost_{\frac{Printer}{hour}}*Print_{time})$. Your printer did cost an initial ammount and will have parts that need to be replaced over time, such as build surfaces, belts, wheels/sliders, oil... Taking the cost of the printer and dividing by an estimated time between full rebuilds or until you need to replace it gets you a price per hour.
  • Labor $(Wage)$. You will need some minutes to slice a print, set up a print job at the printer and finally take it from the bed. Calculate labor costs for that. Some prints also require postprocessing, such as removal of support, in which case the time needs to be reflected too. Note that $(Wage)$ is shorthand for $(\frac{Wage}{hour}*{Worktime})$ and is typically accounted in either 5, 6 of 15 minute increments - 0.083, 0.1 and 0.25 hours respectively.
  • Non-printed-parts $(Cost_{Other\ Materials})$. Some prints also require additions such as nuts, heat set inserts, or filler/paint, which you need to add to the pricing too.
  • Profit margin. Finally, you need to multiply the sum of everything above you wish to include with the profit margin to get to the final price. Note that a profitmargin of 1 is "At cost" and a factor of 2-3 is a quite typical one for many store bought products.

$$(Cost_{\frac{Material}{kilogram}}*Print_{weight}+(Cost_{\frac{Electricity}{hour}}+Cost_{\frac{Printer}{hour}})*Print_{time}+Wage+Cost_{Other\ Materials})*Profitmargin$$

Trish
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I recently faced the problem of calculating the cost of my printed 3D models. I wanted to know what their real value had to be counted in Excel. It was really inconvenient. Then I found a program for counting, it turned out really great, even takes into account the electricity. This is not an advertisement just throwing, maybe someone also encountered such a problem. https://codecanyon.net/item/mcc-3d-model-cost-calculation-for-3d-printer/24033425 I was interested in the question who solved the given problem in what ways?

Oliver Nelson
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