AM Quote Math

How to Calculate Additive Manufacturing Service Bureau Quotes

The core formulas an AM estimator runs to build a defensible quote, worked with real units, sample inputs, and where each number comes from.

A service bureau quote is a stack of small calculations, and getting the math right matters more than any single number. This guide walks the five formulas an additive estimator runs most: fully burdened machine hour rate recovery, nesting yield, support removal labor time, powder refresh cost, and build failure exposure. Every formula below uses explicit units so you can trace a dollar back to a kilogram, a minute, or a build cycle. Work them in order and you can defend any line on the quote. The 3D Printing Quote Cost calculator ties them together, but the components are what make the total honest.

Start with the machine hour rate. The fully burdened cost is annual ownership plus operating cost divided by billable hours. Take a printer at 42,000 dollars per year in depreciation, service contract, and software, plus 8,000 in facility burden, for 50,000 total. If it runs 2,400 billable hours a year (65 percent of 3,650 wall-clock hours after maintenance and idle), the burdened cost is 50,000 divided by 2,400, or 20.83 dollars per hour. Quote at 62 per hour and your Machine Hour Rate Recovery is 62 divided by 20.83, about 298 percent, which covers labor and margin layered on top.

Nesting yield converts a build volume into sellable parts. The formula is usable nested parts divided by requested or theoretical parts. If a 300 by 300 by 300 millimeter SLS chamber theoretically holds 120 of a given bracket at minimum spacing, but thermal clearance, recoater safety, and mixed geometry cut you to 86 good positions, yield is 86 divided by 120, or 71.7 percent. Run this in the Nesting Yield calculator before quoting, because build machine time gets divided across the 86 sellable parts, not the theoretical 120. A 9-hour build at 20.83 per hour spread over 86 parts is 2.18 dollars of machine time per part.

Support removal is the labor line estimators most often lowball. Base time equals supported parts divided by removal throughput, then multiply by one plus a difficult-geometry allowance. Say you have 36 resin parts and a measured throughput of 0.18 parts per minute, giving a base of 36 divided by 0.18, or 200 minutes (3.33 hours). Apply a 25 percent allowance for fragile features and cosmetic cleanup and the Support Removal Labor Time result is 3.33 times 1.25, or 4.17 hours. At a 45 dollar per hour finishing rate, that is 187.50 in labor, or 5.21 per part, a number that vanishes if you skip this step.

Powder refresh is unique to SLS, MJF, binder jet, and DMLS. Captured refresh cost equals virgin powder mass times powder price times billable share, plus a sieving and blending charge. A build consuming 18 kilograms of virgin refresh at 74 dollars per kilogram, billed at 100 percent, is 1,332 dollars of material, plus a 160 dollar handling charge, for 1,492 total via the Powder Refresh Quote Cost calculator. Refresh ratio drives this: a 30 percent refresh policy on a 60 kilogram build means 18 kilograms virgin. Spread across the 86 nested parts from earlier, refresh alone adds 17.35 dollars per part before machine time or finishing.

Build failure exposure prices risk, not certainty. Captured exposure equals expected failures times cost per failure times a chosen exposure percentage, plus recovery overhead. If a large DMLS build has a 25 percent historical failure rate and you plan two builds, expected failures is 0.5. At 640 dollars cost per failure (powder, machine time, labor) and a 50 percent exposure load, that is 0.5 times 640 times 0.50, or 160 dollars, plus 180 in remake overhead, for 340. The Build Failure Exposure calculator keeps this explicit so a risky geometry carries its own allowance instead of quietly eating margin.

Resin jobs use a parallel material formula. Captured resin cost equals resin volume times price per milliliter times billable capture, plus vat and wash handling. A job pulling 520 milliliters, including part, supports, rafts, and trapped resin, at 0.18 dollars per milliliter is 93.60 in material, plus a 65 dollar vat handling charge, for 158.60 through the Resin Service Cost calculator. Convert grams to milliliters using resin density near 1.1 grams per milliliter so units match the labeled inputs. Trapped resin in cupped geometry can add 15 to 20 percent volume that slicer estimates miss entirely.

Assemble the quote by summing the components: material (powder refresh or resin), machine time (hours times burdened rate), support and post-processing labor, failure exposure, plus setup or minimum charges. Using the numbers above for the 86-part SLS batch, per-part cost lands near 17.35 material plus 2.18 machine plus roughly 4 labor plus a share of failure exposure, close to 24 to 26 dollars before margin. Feed that total into the 3D Printing Quote Cost calculator with your rate and capture percentage. Every line traces to a unit, which is what separates a quote you can defend from a guess.

Published 2026-07-01.