Technical context
Decide what you are comparing: hobby consumables, full internal manufacturing cost or an external service quote. A service price includes capacity, commercial risk and profit. Keep these scopes separate when comparing providers or deciding whether to print at home.
What makes up a print’s cost?
View data table
| Comparison | € |
|---|---|
| Material | 3.75 |
| Electricity | 0.288 |
| Machine | 4 |
| Labor | 5 |
Practical workflow
Start with a sliced job, record mass and duration, and time the manual steps. A small decorative part may be cheap in plastic yet expensive to sand and package. A large simple fixture can occupy a printer longer but require little handling.
Calculation and units
Cost = grams × spool price/net grams + hours × W/1000 × tariff + machine hours × rate + labor hours × rate + packaging.
Worked example
120 g at 25/kg cost 3.00; six hours at 120 W and 0.30/kWh cost 0.216; machine cost 3.00, labor 6.00 and packaging 1.00 yield 13.216 before failure reserve and profit.
Validate the outcome
Exclude energy and maintenance from an hourly machine rate if they are counted separately. Compare finishing-time scenarios before quoting.
Three cost boundaries worth keeping separate
For an occasional hobby print, incremental expenditure may be the question: filament, extra energy and any consumable used specifically for that job. An already-owned printer does not create a new cash payment every hour. However, its future replacement still matters when comparing a repeatable service or deciding whether hobby production is sustainable. State this boundary explicitly rather than calling a consumables-only figure the total cost.
For a workshop, full internal manufacturing cost allocates capital, maintenance and active work as well as consumables. A selling price then adds commercial considerations: fees, support, warranty exposure and profit. These three numbers can all be reasonable for the same object. They answer different questions, so a home material estimate should not be used to accuse a service quote of being incorrect.
What changes cost most in practice?
Consider two 120 g models. One prints without support and needs five minutes of removal and inspection. The other needs twenty minutes of careful support removal and another twenty minutes of sanding. At an illustrative labor rate of 18 per hour, those handling times contribute 1.50 and 12.00 respectively. The same material mass hides a 10.50 difference before machine duration is considered.
Conversely, a long automated print can have modest active labor but substantial occupied capacity. If the machine is the workshop bottleneck, ten hours spent on a low-contribution object prevent other jobs from using that capacity. The cost calculator makes resource use visible; prioritizing the order queue also requires contribution per constrained machine hour.
A comparison checklist for a real quote
When comparing two quotes, align quantity, material grade, orientation constraints, finish, tolerance expectations and delivery. Ask whether model preparation and revisions are included and whether the quote covers accepted parts or merely a printing attempt. A low price with undefined surface quality is not necessarily equivalent to a higher price including inspection and a repeatable acceptance criterion.
Use the same currency and a consistent tax basis. Do not mix a tax-inclusive retail spool purchase with a tax-exclusive supplier quote without deciding the comparison policy. Keep the output as an estimate until the actual job is measured. A displayed currency total with two decimals makes the interface readable, but does not remove uncertainty in time, yield or finishing effort.
Cost boundary comparison
| Boundary | Includes | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Consumables | Material and job energy | Additional outlay |
| Internal manufacture | Consumables plus allocated machine and labor | Resource cost |
| Service price | Manufacture plus fees overhead and profit | Customer offer |
Compare two equally heavy jobs
Compare two 120 g parts at 0.025/g: both spend 3.00 in filament. If part A needs five active minutes and part B forty, at 18/h their labor is 1.50 and 12.00. That 10.50 difference can exceed the entire material bill. Next compare machine occupancy and support waste, then ask whether both outputs meet the same function. This driver-by-driver comparison is more informative than one universal price per gram.
Is a cost per gram enough for a service quote?
It is enough only for a narrowly defined material estimate. It omits the machine occupancy, setup, support removal, finishing, inspection, packing and commercial overhead that can dominate a real service. If the supplier uses a per-gram price as a shorthand, ask what scope and minimum order are included. Compare offers against the same accepted-part requirements rather than treating any one pricing convention as universally correct.
Can a smaller model cost more to produce?
Yes. A small object can have many supports, delicate features, repeated color transitions or extensive hand finishing. Compare total sliced consumption, time and handling rather than external size. Scaling down can also make features fail, creating reprints or requiring a finer nozzle and slower profile. The geometric size is one driver, not a sufficient cost model.