Plasma cutting pricing explained
How a Plasma cutting price is assembled, setting by setting, with a worked example priced by the engine itself.
These are the settings that decide how the work is priced, as opposed to the machine that does it or the material it is made from. They are stored with the configuration.
Every one of them shows up in the breakdown when it affects a price, so if a number surprises you, the answer is on the screen.
A worked example
These numbers were computed by the pricing engine against the shipped Plasma steel shop configuration - the one you get if you start from the template. They are regenerated whenever the engine changes, so they cannot drift away from what your own console would show for the same part.
| Line | One part | Ten parts |
|---|---|---|
| Material | €0.71 | €6.31 |
| Production | €44.29 | €52.19 |
| Total, incl. shipping and VAT | €123.76 | €123.76 |
| Machine time per part | 0 min | 0 min |
Note how the price per part falls with quantity: a batch shares what is done once - a set-up, a program, a whole build on a powder process, the tool in moulding. That is where the quantity break comes from. It is not a discount you are giving away; it is your cost structure, passed on.
Every setting on this page
These are in the same order as the editor, with the same help text. Each one has an anchor, and the ? beside a field in your console links straight to it - so if you are reading this because you clicked one, the setting you were looking at is highlighted.
Drawing, sheet use & handling
Layer maplayer_mapbasic
Which layers and colours of a drawing are cut, engraved or ignored. The first matching row wins; an empty layer or colour matches any, and a group no row matches is cut.
Price: Engraving is charged at the machine's engrave speed instead of the cut speed and needs no pierce; ignored groups cost nothing.
Typical: engrave layer: engrave · raster layer: raster · Defpoints: ignore.
Layerlayerbasic
Colourcolorbasic
Operationoperationbasicyou must set this
Sheet chargingchargingbasic
How much sheet a part is charged for.
Price: Bounding box charges the rectangle the part needs; net area charges the material in the part plus waste; utilisation divides the net area by how full your nests usually are; sheet share divides a whole sheet by the parts that fit on it.
Typical: Bounding box + margin.
Bounding-box marginbbox_margin_mm
Added to each side length of the part's rectangle under bounding-box charging.
Price: A wider margin charges more sheet per part.
Typical: 5-10 mm.
Net-area wastenet_waste_pct
Skeleton and offcut added to the net area under net-area charging.
Price: Raises the material line of every part in proportion.
Typical: 20-40 %.
Typical nest utilisationutilisation_pct
How much of a sheet your nests usually turn into parts, under utilisation charging.
Price: The net area is divided by it: 75 % charges a third more than the net area.
Typical: 65-85 %.
Gap between nested partspart_gap_mm
Space left between parts on the sheet; the kerf of the thickness is added to it.
Price: A bigger gap fits fewer parts on a sheet, so sheet handling is shared by fewer.
Typical: 8-15 mm.
Unusable sheet edgesheet_edge_mm
Border of the sheet that is never cut: clamps, trim, a bent edge.
Price: Shrinks the usable sheet, so a large part may not fit and fewer small ones do.
Typical: 10-20 mm.
Rapid-travel factorrapid_tour_factor
Rapid travel between cuts is estimated as this factor times the square root of starts times drawing area (0.71 is the tour length between random points).
Price: Raises the travel time of drawings with many separate cuts.
Typical: 0.7.
CAM and nesting per drawingfile_prep_minbasic
Opening the drawing, assigning layers, nesting and posting the program.
Price: Charged once per drawing whatever the quantity, which is most of the price of a one-off.
Typical: 5-20 min.
Part removal per piecepart_removal_min
Breaking one piece out of the skeleton and stacking it.
Price: Charged for every piece of every copy.
Typical: 0.2-1 min.
Edge cleaning per metre of cutedge_clean_min_per_m
Knocking dross off and grinding every metre of cut edge.
Price: Charged per metre of cut on every part, so long outlines cost more.
Typical: 0.3-0.6 min/m.