How to price laser cutting jobs (setup, pierces, cut length, material and minimums)

Most laser quotes go wrong in the same few places: the pierces nobody counted, the sheet that was half scrap, the setup that got buried in a one-off part. This guide walks through the pieces of a laser cutting price, in the order you’d build it, then puts real arithmetic on an example part.

All the rates below are example rates to show the method. They aren’t market prices or advice on what to charge. Use your own machine, your own material costs and your own overhead.

The pieces of a laser cutting price

A defensible quote for a cut part has six parts:

1. Material: what the steel, stainless or aluminum for this part costs you, including the waste around it.
2. Machine time: how long the laser is cutting, priced at a machine rate.
3. Pierces: every hole and internal cutout starts with one, and each takes time.
4. Setup: opening the file, nesting it, loading the sheet, first-article check.
5. Secondary operations: bending on the press brake, deburring, hardware, finishing.
6. Margin, quantity breaks and a minimum order.

Get each one right separately and the total takes care of itself.

Material: price by weight, with an allowance for the nest

Start from the part’s flat size (its bounding rectangle, or the true area if your software can nest tightly) and add a nesting allowance for the skeleton, the kerf and the part spacing. Nobody cuts a 4” × 7” bracket out of exactly 28 square inches of steel.

Then turn area into weight:

• Volume = area × thickness
• Weight = volume × density
• Material cost = weight × your cost per pound

Steel is about 7,850 kg/m³, which works out to roughly 0.284 lb per cubic inch (Engineering ToolBox). Aluminum is about a third of that, and stainless is close to mild steel. Use the figures from your supplier’s data sheets for the alloys you actually stock.

Most shops add a material markup on top of cost to cover buying, storing and handling sheet, and to cover price swings between quoting and buying.

Remnants and drops

If a job needs a full sheet but only uses half of it, decide up front who pays for the other half. Some shops charge for the whole sheet on large parts; others charge by area and keep a remnant rack. Either is fine. What loses money is charging by area and scrapping the drop.

Machine time: cut length divided by speed

The laser costs money by the minute, not by the inch. To price it:

• Cut length: the total length of every edge the beam travels, outside profile plus every hole and slot. Quoting software reads this from the DXF.
• Cut speed: from your machine’s cut charts, for that material and thickness. Speed falls sharply as material gets thicker.
• Minutes = cut length ÷ speed
• Cut cost = minutes × machine rate

Your machine rate has to cover everything that runs when the laser runs: power, assist gas, nozzles and lenses, maintenance, the operator’s time, and paying off the machine. Work it out once from your actual costs and the hours the laser really cuts in a month, and revisit it when gas or power prices move.

Pierces: the line everyone forgets

Every closed shape needs its own pierce before the cut starts. A gusset with one lightening hole has two pierces; a mounting plate with twenty holes has twenty-one. Pierce time rises with thickness, so a thick plate with many holes can spend more time piercing than cutting.

Count pierces from the file and charge them as their own line, with a per-pierce rate that increases with thickness. On small parts with lots of holes, this line often costs more than the cut itself, as the example below shows.

Setup: per job, not per part

Setup is opening and checking the file, nesting it, pulling and loading the material, and checking the first part. It happens once per job (and again per material or thickness), whether the order is for one part or two hundred.

Charge setup per job and spread it across the quantity. That’s what makes one-off prices high and production prices low, honestly, without a made-up discount.

Secondary operations: bends, deburr, hardware

If the part goes to the press brake, add:

• Brake setup: tooling change and a test bend, once per job.
• A per-bend rate: each bend is a handling and positioning step.

Deburring, tapping, PEM hardware, countersinks and finishing each need their own line or a per-part adder. If you send parts out for powder coat or plating, add the vendor’s cost plus your handling.

Margin, quantity breaks and the minimum order

Margin goes on top of your processing costs. Whether you apply one margin to everything or a different one to material and processing is your call; just apply it the same way every time.

Quantity breaks should come from real savings: setup spread over more parts, less handling per part on a bigger run. Write down the break points and the percentage off, and use the same table on every quote.

A minimum order covers the cost of a job existing at all: quoting it, nesting it, loading the machine, invoicing it. Without one, a $6 order for two tabs costs you money. Apply the minimum to the order total, and tell the customer it’s there.

A worked example (example rates only)

The part: a bent bracket, 4” × 7” flat, in 1/8” mild steel, with 25.1” of cut, 3 pierces and 1 bend. The customer wants 25.

The example rates, the same ones used on the instant quoting page:

Example rate	Value
Mild steel cost	$0.75 per lb
Nesting allowance	+15% on area
Material markup	×1.25
Cut speed, 1/8” mild steel	300 in/min
Machine rate	$3.50 per minute
Pierce	$0.15 each at 1/8”
Bend	$2.00 each
Handling	$0.85 per part
Margin on processing	×1.3
Laser setup / brake setup	$20 / $30 per job
Quantity break at 25+	14% off
Minimum order	$40

Per part, before breaks and setup:

Line	Arithmetic	Cost
Material	28 in² × 1.15 × 0.125” × 0.284 lb/in³ = 1.14 lb; × $0.75 × 1.25	$1.07
Cut	25.1” ÷ 300 in/min = 0.084 min; × $3.50 × 1.3	$0.38
Pierces	3 × $0.15 × 1.3	$0.59
Bend	1 × $2.00 × 1.3	$2.60
Handling	$0.85 × 1.3	$1.11
Subtotal		$5.74

For 25 parts: the 14% break takes the $5.74 down to $4.94. Setup is $20 + $30 = $50 for the job, or $2.00 a part across 25. That’s $6.94 a part, $173.46 for the order.

The same part at other quantities, same rates:

Quantity	Per part	Order total
1	$55.74	$55.74
10	$10.28	$102.83
25	$6.94	$173.46
50	$5.59	$279.69
100	$4.81	$480.68

Two things stand out. First, on a small part the cut is the cheapest line: the pierces, the bend and the handling cost more. Price only by cut length and you’d miss most of the cost. Second, the one-off price is almost all setup. That’s real, and the quote should show it.

The minimum in action: four small shock tabs (3” × 2”, 11.9” of cut, 2 pierces, no bends) come to about $27.62 at these rates, including laser setup. The $40 minimum applies, and the quote should say so.

Common pricing mistakes

• Not counting pierces. A plate with 30 holes is a different job from a plain blank of the same size.
• Quoting thick plate at thin-sheet speeds. Use the cut chart speed for the actual thickness. Thicker material cuts much slower and pierces slower too.
• Ignoring small-part handling. Tiny parts take time to break out of the skeleton, sort, count and bag. A per-part handling charge covers it.
• Charging by area and scrapping the drop. Decide whether the customer pays for the sheet or you keep the remnant, and stick to it.
• Burying setup in the part price. It makes production runs look expensive and one-offs look cheap. Show setup per job.
• Rates in a spreadsheet only one person understands. If the quote depends on who’s at the counter, it’s not a price list.

Doing this in ShopJig

ShopJig’s instant quoting module prices laser cutting and press-brake work from a customer’s DXF or STEP file using the rates your shop sets in an admin: materials and thicknesses, machine rates, setup, margins, quantity breaks and the minimum order. Accepted work can run through fab orders and travelers with real operation times. The laser cutting quoting software page has an interactive version of this example. For the bigger picture, see fabrication shop software.

Sources

• The Engineering ToolBox: Metals and alloys, densities (steel 7,850 kg/m³): https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/metal-alloys-densities-d_50.html