Every other costing on this site treats the print as the product. In a workshop that sells parts, the print is only part of the job: somebody prepares the file, loads the plate, removes the part, cleans off support and inspects it. That person is more expensive per hour than the machine, and on short runs their time can outweigh the plastic several times over.
This machine is bought by people in exactly that situation, so this is the page to put labour in the model.
A production part, with the human included
260 g at $32/kg, 15 hours, machine time at $1.10 an hour, 25 minutes of operator time at $30/hour, and a 5% failure allowance:
| Term | Amount |
|---|---|
| Filament | $8.32 |
| Electricity, 2.85 kWh | $0.50 |
| Machine time | $16.50 |
| Labour, 25 minutes | $12.50 |
| Failure allowance | $1.33 |
| Total | $39.15 |
Labour is twenty-five times the electricity. It is also the term most likely to be missing from a quote, because it does not appear on any invoice — the printer's electricity has a bill attached and your own half hour does not.
The model deliberately does not multiply labour by the failure rate by default, because a failed print usually wastes the machine's time and the plastic rather than repeating the setup work. Whether that is right for your workflow is a question worth thinking about; you can change it in the cost calculator.
The electricity figure rests on a wattage estimated from comparable enclosed machines of this size rather than metered on this model, and it is the smallest line in the table by a factor of twenty-five.
What reduces the labour term
This is where a machine like this earns its price, and none of it appears on a specification sheet:
- A build surface parts release from cleanly, so removal is seconds rather than a struggle with a scraper.
- Reliable first layers, so the operator is not restarting jobs.
- Soluble or well-separating support, which turns twenty minutes of cleanup into two — the supports guide covers when each type is worth it.
- A machine that runs unattended overnight, so the hours it works are hours nobody is paid for.
A cheaper printer that needs ten more minutes of attention per part costs more per part in a business, at any plausible filament price. That is the entire economic argument for professional machines, and it is a real one.
Dual extrusion in an office context
Two independently heated nozzles allow a support material different from the model material, and they allow two-colour or two-property parts. In a professional setting the support case dominates: internal geometry that cannot be cleaned by hand is exactly what dissolvable support exists for.
The second toolhead is not free. The idle nozzle oozes, which is what the prime tower is for, and that tower is filament you bought and threw away. On small parts it can be a significant share of the total mass, and it belongs in your per-part mass rather than in a general sense that "some is wasted".
The enclosure and the room
An enclosed machine with air filtration in an office is a different proposition from an open one, and the reason is not print quality — it is that the people around it are breathing. Printing ABS, ASA or polycarbonate releases ultrafine particles and volatiles; filtration reduces them and ventilation removes them, and a machine intended for a shared room needs both considered.
The chamber here is passive rather than heated, which is enough for ABS and filled nylons at this plate size and not enough for unfilled nylon or polycarbonate on wide parts.
Failure modes that matter in production
Nozzle wear on composites. Brass nozzles running filled filament widen gradually. Nothing fails; the extrusion width simply drifts away from calibration while every setting still reads correctly. Inconsistent extrusion width is the symptom, and in production the answer is tracking nozzle hours rather than waiting for a bad part.
Support material moisture. Soluble supports pull water out of the air faster than the model material does, and a damp one lays down rough and then refuses to dissolve at an even rate, leaving residue in exactly the internal corners you bought it to reach. Keep it in a dry enclosure rather than on a shelf.
A long print failing late. At 15 hours a failure is expensive, which is why a 5% allowance is only defensible on a machine and material combination you have proven. On a new filament, use a higher figure until you have data.
When the purchase price will never come back
Hobby printing will not amortise this machine, and no amount of enthusiasm changes that arithmetic. A heated chamber for polycarbonate at size is a different requirement, and the Qidi X-Max 3 does that specific thing far more cheaply. Occasional single parts are the third mismatch, because this machine's whole advantage is in the labour and reliability terms that only appear when you are printing constantly.