Plating, Anodizing & Surface Treatment calculator

Pretreatment Cost Calculator

Find pretreatment expense from the number of cleaning sequences actually completed. Enter initial and repeat pass counts, operator time, labor rate and allocated bath expense.

What this calculator does

  • Price actual cleaning passes and booked bath makeup and disposal, including observed repeat pretreatment work.

Formula used

  • Cleaning person-hours = total part-passes × person-minutes per pass ÷ 60
  • Pretreatment expense = cleaning person-hours × loaded labor rate + bath expense
  • Repeat passes = total part-passes − initial parts
  • First-pass clean share (%) = 100 × first-pass clean parts ÷ initial parts
  • Initial part cost = pretreatment expense ÷ initial parts

Inputs explained

  • Initial Parts: Count distinct parts entering the pretreatment sequence.
  • First-Pass Clean Parts: Count parts passing your surface preparation check initially.
  • Total Cleaning Passes: Count every completed initial and repeated pretreatment sequence.
  • Bath Makeup and Dump Expense: Booked bath makeup and disposal expense allocated to this job.
  • Labor per Cleaning Pass: Observed summed operator minutes for one complete part sequence.
  • Loaded Cleaning Labor Rate: Payroll burdened labor rate for the cleaning operators.

How to use the result

  • Best suited to recorded repeated cleaning sequences, bath expense allocation.
  • Cleaning effectiveness and bath settings require your approved preparation checks. Consumables outside the bath allocation require separate charges.

Current U.S. benchmarks

  • The producer price index for industrial chemicals stands at 336.006 (BLS, Aug 2026), up 13.3% from a year earlier. Quotes priced off last quarter's material cost miss this move.
  • The U.S. has 14,543 chemical manufacturing establishments employing about 911,245 workers (Census County Business Patterns, 2023).

Common questions

  • Are all failed parts cleaned again? Not necessarily, use the recorded total cleaning passes. Failed parts may be scrapped, held or cleaned more than once.
  • What counts as one pass? One pass is one complete qualified pretreatment sequence for one part. Use the same sequence boundary when measuring its person-minutes.
  • Does a full batch soak equal many person-hours? No, person-hours measure attended labor summed across people. Unattended soak time belongs in equipment or energy costing if you need it.
  • Can this certify that the surface is clean? No, cleanliness comes from your approved inspection or process checks. This calculator only reports the count that passed those checks.

Last reviewed 2026-10-06.