Cost & Quoting

Cost Estimation and Quoting for Laser and Optics Manufacturing

Break down the real cost drivers in laser and optics work and build a quote that survives scrutiny, from machine rate to scrap and coating.

Cost per unit in this category splits into five buckets: material, machine time, labor, scrap, and overhead. For a coated precision lens the rough weighting is material and blank 20 percent, polishing and machine time 30 percent, coating 15 percent, direct labor 20 percent, and scrap plus overhead 15 percent. The mix shifts hard by product: sheet laser cutting is machine-rate dominated at 45 to 55 percent, while photonics assembly is labor dominated at 50 to 65 percent. Quote each bucket from its own driver rather than applying a blanket cost-per-hour to the whole job.

Machine rate is the number estimators get wrong most often. Build a true hourly rate from depreciation, energy, gas, consumables, maintenance, and floor space, not just the lease payment. A 6 kW fiber laser commonly lands at 90 to 140 dollars per hour all-in. Assist gas alone is material: nitrogen cutting of 6 mm stainless can burn 8 to 12 dollars of gas per hour at high flow, versus cents for oxygen. Use the Laser Process Cost calculator to combine cut time and rate, and the Laser Energy Cost calculator to price the electricity slice at your local rate, often 0.10 to 0.20 dollars per kWh.

Material cost must include the blank plus the scrap you designed in. Nest efficiency of 78 percent means every dollar of sheet yields 78 cents of parts, so divide raw material cost by nest yield to get true material per part. For optics, the blank is only the start: a 50 mm fused silica window blank might be 40 dollars, but reject-driven scrap doubles effective material spend if yield is weak. The Optics Scrap Cost calculator turns your reject rate and blank price into a per-good-unit material burden so you stop quoting off the ideal blank price.

Labor cost tracks the alignment, polishing, and test minutes, loaded with real burden. A photonics technician at 32 dollars per hour base carries to 48 to 55 dollars fully burdened once benefits, supervision, and idle time are included. A 75 minute alignment is therefore 60 to 69 dollars of labor before any test. Price cleanroom labor higher: gowning, air changes, and slower motion add 20 to 35 percent. The Photonics Assembly Labor and Optical Alignment Workload calculators convert minutes into dollars, and the Clean Optics Handling Burden calculator captures the handling time cleanroom protocols add that estimators routinely omit.

Scrap is a cost multiplier, not a line item you tack on at the end. If yield is 92 percent, you must start and pay to process 1000 / 0.92 = 1087 units to ship 1000, so every upstream cost divides by 0.92. Worse, a lens scrapped after coating carries its full polishing and coating cost, not just the blank. Weight scrap by the operation where it occurs: a post-coat reject on a 120 dollar coated lens is a 120 dollar loss. The Optics Scrap Cost and Lens Coating Cost calculators let you attribute scrap at the correct process step.

Coating and test are specialty costs that need their own line. Ion-assisted deposition of a multilayer AR coating runs 8 to 25 dollars per surface at volume and far more for low quantities because chamber setup is fixed and amortizes over the batch. A 200 piece run absorbs a 600 dollar chamber setup at 3 dollars per part; a 20 piece run absorbs the same setup at 30 dollars per part. The Lens Coating Cost calculator models chamber setup plus per-surface cost, and the Photonics Test Time calculator converts test minutes into dollars at your instrument rate.

Overhead and yield-at-quantity are where quotes drift on repeat orders. Apply overhead as a percentage of direct cost, commonly 18 to 30 percent for a precision optics shop, and state it explicitly so it survives audit. Volume changes the math: setup, programming, and first-article inspection are fixed, so a 25 piece job might carry 45 dollars per part of setup while a 1000 piece job carries 1.10 dollars. Never quote a large order at small-order unit cost or you leave 20 to 40 percent on the table; re-run the model at the actual quantity.

Build the quote bottom-up, then sanity-check top-down. Sum material, machine, labor, coating, test, scrap, and overhead per unit, then compare to a known benchmark such as dollars per finished square inch of optic or dollars per aligned port. If your bottom-up number lands 30 percent off the historical benchmark, find the driver before you send it, usually an underpriced scrap rate or an omitted handling burden. Quote a defensible range, hold a 10 to 15 percent contingency on new geometries, and tighten it once the first 20 parts give you real yield and cycle data.

Published 2026-07-01.