If you own a 3D printer, I’m quite sure
that you have already been asked “Oh, can
you print this for me?
Just tell me what you wanna have for it.”
And if you do this for friends and family,
charging only for filament is fine.
But what if you really want to earn some money
with 3D printing?
In this video I’m going to show you how
I quote parts for customers and what costs
you really need to consider.
Guten Tag everybody, I’m Stefan and welcome
to CNC kitchen.
I have to admit that I actually hate business
administration and I try to avoid it as much
as possible.
But when I started printing parts for customers
I actually had to come up with a way to make
reasonable quotes.
In this video I’m going to show you the
EXCEL spreadsheet that I use for this process
and explain you how to use it; so that you
can also get an idea how much your prints
actually cost.
I am an engineer and never studied business
so some assumptions and methods that I use
might not be 100% correct but they work pretty
well for me.
Also, this method is probably too simple if
you run a big business, but if you 3D print
as I side business should be sufficient.
You can find a link to my EXCEL spreadsheet
down in the description.
I would be really interested to hear your
idea about my approach and what you maybe
would have done differently.
There is some chance that you also find an
error in my calculation.
So please leave a comment down below!
All right, so let’s dive right in.
I split up the costs of a print into 6 sections:
Material cost, electricity, printer depreciation,
preparation and post-processing labor costs
and other consumables.
Maybe different to the expectation of some,
filament is actually not the biggest item
in that calculation and electricity costs
are more or less negligible.
Depending on how much you value your time,
labor can actually be the biggest part of
the total costs of a print.
So the spreadsheet has a summary worksheet,
a list of printers, a list of materials and
a general settings worksheet.
Input fields are orange, calculations grey
and results green.
If you really want to calculate the cost of
a print you need to factor in, that every
print will wear out your printer a little
bit.
Depending on your printer lifetime assumptions
you can then calculate what one hour of printing
actually costs.
That’s simply speaking depreciation.
You can add a new printer in every line, they
only need to have a unique name.
Material diameter is at the moment only for
information.
Then you have the price of the printer when
you bought it.
Depreciation is usually calculated by the
number of years you can use a machine and
the number of hours you use it every day.
That’s too complicated for me so I made
a guess on how many hours the printer will
last until it’s probably unusable anymore.
A more expensive printer might last longer
than a cheap China printer and therefore might
be in the end cheaper to operate.
Service cost is also a guess and includes
the spare parts you might need, like nozzles,
heat beds or bearings and does also involve
the labor costs you might need for the fixes.
10 to 25% of the printers price usually is
a good estimation for that.
The depreciation per hour is now calculated
by simply dividing the sum of printer cost
and service costs by the lifetime of the printer.
The energy consumption of FDM printers is
actually pretty low and values of 100 to 150W
are realistic for printing PLA.
I will probably include a second value for
materials that require higher temperatures
in the future.
In the materials worksheet you can add a bunch
of filaments that you use.
The values a pretty self-explanatory.
Maybe consider adding the shipping costs to
your filament price, because that is something
you will have to pay.
Nozzle temperature, print temperature and
length per roll are only for informational
purposes.
All filaments are then normalized to the price
per kilogram, which is then considered for
the calculation.
Just as the name suggests, the general worksheet
contains some general information like the
price per kilowatt hour in your region.
Labor cost is a point which is debatable.
How much do you value your time?
As we have seen at the beginning, depending
on the part you print this might be the biggest
item on the bill.
In my opinion, you should not put a value
too low in there.
Even though you might like tinkering and 3D
printing, if you want to earn something then
this is important.
This also does not only include your salary
but also software, rent and insurances you
might need to run your prints.
But what you have to consider is how much
the customer is willing to pay.
If you only make easy parts which almost anybody
can do, then you will need to be okay with
a lower salary, because otherwise you might
be too expensive.
If you make really complex parts which need
experience then value you time higher.
I think a reasonable value should be between
20 and 60€.
In the end you still need to be competitive.
So in order to reduce your labor time and
therefore the final costs, spending 150€
on Simplify3D might be a good investment if
this makes creating and removing supports
easier.
Also using a machine that can print soluble
support material might reduce the costs in
the end, because you don’t need to worry
about support anymore at all!
Prints will fail and if they shouldn’t make
you bankrupt you need to consider them in
you cost calculations.
I think 10% is a good estimation but that’s
up to you.
At last you can set the money unit to your
currency of choice!
All right, so let’s go to the main worksheet.
The header is for information only.
Under general details you can chose one of
the printers you have defined before.
The same goes with the filament.
Just use the drop-down menu and select your
material of choice.
Then you have to enter the amount of material
that will be needed.
In the current version you enter this with
the weight, but depending on the material
type you use this might be quite different.
So make sure, that you have set the right
density in your slicer as you have in the
material database.
Also doublecheck the displayed length if your
slicer provides that information.
Then you need to enter the printing time and
this can also be tricky.
If you have ever compared the printing time
shown in your slicer to the actual time the
print took, you might have noticed that they
can vary quite a bit.
The actual print time usually is longer.
The reason for this is that the slicers usually
don’t account for accelerations during printing
which do have a small influence printing big
parts with long printmoves but can drastically
increase the print time of parts with many
short moves.
You can get better estimations if you use
the online G-Code Analyzer.
If you know your printer settings you can
put them in there, upload your g code file
and get a pretty good estimation of the print
time.
The next section covers the labor costs.
As I have already pointed out before, this
is the part, where you really make money,
the rest is only for covering the costs.
Add the times you think you will need for
model preparation and slicing.
It will also take you some time, to put the
right material into your printer and maybe
watch the first couple of layers to make sure
that everything looks okay.
This is time you dedicate on that print job
so you need to consider that for the price
of a part.
Post-processing does involve the time it takes
you for removing the part from the printer
and remove supports if there are any.
Additional work includes things like sanding,
gluing, painting et cetera.
In the miscellaneous section you add the consumables
you need for each print.
This can be for example adhesion spray, tape,
isopropanol for cleaning and others.
So that’s actually it.
The section costs summarize the values of
each item and can help you identify the cost
drivers of your part.
If you really want to make a quote for a part
you should consider a markup on your internal
costs because otherwise you are more or less
only covering the costs and pay for your time.
If you want to earn something and grow your
business then you need to make a profit and
this is where you can adjust that.
You will need to consider if the market or
your customer is willing to pay more and if
there are competitors.
If you are too expensive then you won’t
earn anything at all but you also should not
sell your work under your internal costs.
Just a small pro-tip: If you make a quote
for a customer then don’t round the value
but instead give an uneven number.
This will then at least look like as if you
really know what you’re doing and therefore
make a really well calculated price.
So I hope I was able to give you some interesting
information about the costs involved in 3D
printing, even though this was probably not
how you would have learned it in your business
class.
Give it a thumbs up if you liked it, consider
subscribing and leave a comment down below.
Consider supporting me via PayPal or Amazon
and take a look at my other videos.
Thanks for watching, auf Wiedersehen and I
will see you next time!
