What markup should a 3D printing service use?

The question hides a units problem, and getting it wrong is the commonest pricing mistake in the trade.

A 100% markup and a 50% margin are the same price. Markup is what you add to cost; margin is what you keep from the sale. For a part that costs $5.15 to produce:

Notice how fast markup runs away at the top. A shop advertising a 233% markup and a shop advertising a 70% margin sound like different businesses and are charging identical money.

Which end of that table you belong at

• The low end suits high-volume repeat work with clean files and no design input — you are selling machine capacity, and capacity competes on price.
• The high end suits one-off, design-involved, fast-turnaround work where the print is a small part of what you delivered.

Neither is more honest than the other. What is dishonest is choosing a number before you know your cost, because then the margin is whatever happens to be left.

The cost you are marking up has to be complete

A margin applied to an incomplete cost is a margin on nothing. The four terms that go missing most often, in order of how much they matter:

1. Labour. Slicing, plate prep, removal, cleanup, packing. Usually the largest single term on small work.
2. Failures. A 20% scrap rate multiplies real cost by 1.25, and it is invisible in any per-job estimate.
3. Machine time. Wear, amortisation, consumables — a real hourly figure, not zero.
4. The quote itself. Answering emails, checking a customer's model, explaining why their wall is too thin.

A practical floor

Never quote below the point where a repeat of the job would be unwelcome. If a customer comes back with ten more and your reaction is a sinking feeling, the price was wrong regardless of what the spreadsheet says.

Work out your own cost first, then experiment with the margin, in the print cost calculator. The resale pricing guide works through the margin arithmetic in full.