How do you calculate build failure exposure?

Multiply expected failures by cost per failure by the share you quote into the price, then add fixed recovery overhead. With 2 failures at $640 each captured at 50 percent ($640) plus $180 overhead, exposure is $820.

What is a good build failure rate for a service bureau?

Mature LPBF and SLS operations target under 5 percent of builds scrapped; resin printers running validated supports can hit 2-3 percent. Above 10 percent your exposure dominates the quote and signals a process or qualification problem.

Should I quote 100 percent of failure cost or less?

It depends on competitive pressure. Quoting 50 percent (as in the default) means you share risk with the customer and absorb the rest in margin; 100 percent fully protects you but raises the price and can lose price-sensitive RFQs.

Why include recovery and remake overhead separately?

Captured failure exposure scales with quantity and capture rate, but reprint setup, re-sieving, re-inspection and expedite handling are largely fixed per incident. Keeping the $180 overhead separate stops it from being diluted at low capture rates.

How is this different from a simple scrap allowance?

A flat scrap percentage spreads risk evenly across all parts. This model ties exposure to actual expected failure count and per-failure cost, so a job with two expensive Inconel plates is priced very differently from fifty cheap nylon clips.

What cost should I use per failed build?

Include consumed powder or resin, machine hours at your burdened rate, inert gas, and post-processing already done before the failure was caught — not just material. The $640 default reflects a mid-size metal build, not raw feedstock alone.

Additive Manufacturing Service Bureau Quoting calculator

Build Failure Exposure Calculator

Build Failure Exposure is the expected dollar cost of failed additive builds — warped LPBF plates, delaminated SLS cakes, support collapses on resin parts — that a service bureau carries on a given job. Quoting engineers and bureau operations managers use it to decide how much of that historical scrap risk to bake into a price rather than absorb as margin erosion. On powder-bed and resin systems where a single overnight build swallows days of machine time and kilograms of feedstock, a 5 percent failure rate quietly turns a profitable quote into a loss. This calculator separates the failure risk you actually capture in the price from the fixed remake overhead you will eat regardless.

What this calculator does

Estimate quote risk from failed builds or rejected parts, including failure cost, expected exposure, and recovery charges.
a quoting manager needs to price failure risk for a difficult material, geometry, or rush order
It computes total dollar exposure from anticipated build failures by combining captured failure risk (expected failures times cost times quoted capture) with fixed recovery and remake overhead.

Formula used

Captured failure exposure = expected failures × cost per failure × quoted exposure
Build failure exposure = captured failure exposure + recovery and remake overhead

Inputs explained

Expected failed builds per job:
Cost per scrapped build:
Failure cost recovered in quote:
Recovery and remake overhead:

How to use the result

Use it when quoting a multi-part build or a recurring production contract on a machine with a known historical failure rate, so the price reflects real scrap risk.
It assumes your expected-failure count and per-failure cost are accurate; a single catastrophic full-plate crash can exceed the modeled average, so treat it as expected value, not a worst-case ceiling.

Current U.S. benchmarks

The producer price index for plastic resins and materials stands at 319.371 (BLS, May 2026), up 19.5% from a year earlier. Quotes priced off last quarter's material cost miss this move.
The U.S. prime lending rate is 6.75% (Federal Reserve via FRED, 2026-07-02). Payback and financing math should start from today's rate, not a remembered one.

Common questions

How do you calculate build failure exposure? Multiply expected failures by cost per failure by the share you quote into the price, then add fixed recovery overhead. With 2 failures at $640 each captured at 50 percent ($640) plus $180 overhead, exposure is $820.
What is a good build failure rate for a service bureau? Mature LPBF and SLS operations target under 5 percent of builds scrapped; resin printers running validated supports can hit 2-3 percent. Above 10 percent your exposure dominates the quote and signals a process or qualification problem.
Should I quote 100 percent of failure cost or less? It depends on competitive pressure. Quoting 50 percent (as in the default) means you share risk with the customer and absorb the rest in margin; 100 percent fully protects you but raises the price and can lose price-sensitive RFQs.
Why include recovery and remake overhead separately? Captured failure exposure scales with quantity and capture rate, but reprint setup, re-sieving, re-inspection and expedite handling are largely fixed per incident. Keeping the $180 overhead separate stops it from being diluted at low capture rates.
How is this different from a simple scrap allowance? A flat scrap percentage spreads risk evenly across all parts. This model ties exposure to actual expected failure count and per-failure cost, so a job with two expensive Inconel plates is priced very differently from fifty cheap nylon clips.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.