“Laser engraving cost per hour” can refer to three different numbers: what the machine costs to own and operate, what the operator's time costs, and what the business charges a customer per hour. Mixing them produces misleading quotes.
1. Machine operating cost
Machine cost includes depreciation, maintenance and consumables, electricity and allocated overhead. It should be calculated per machine hour or machine minute. It does not include your hourly labor.
Maintenance = annual maintenance ÷ annual machine hours
Energy = average watts ÷ 1,000 × price per kWh
2. Labor cost
Labor includes file preparation, setup, material handling, monitoring, cleaning, packing and customer service. Even if you are the only worker, assign an hourly cost. Labor should be measured from a sample of real jobs, not an optimistic estimate.
3. Billable rate
A billable rate is a pricing decision, not a direct cost. It must recover machine cost, labor, non-job overhead, marketplace fees, downtime, tax obligations and planned profit. Two shops can have the same machine cost and choose different billable rates because their costs and goals differ.
Example calculation
Suppose the machine cost $4,500, has an expected resale value of $300 and a useful life of 5,000 machine hours. Depreciation is $0.84 per hour. Maintenance is budgeted at $240 per year for 600 machine hours, or $0.40 per hour. A 450-watt average load at $0.17 per kWh costs about $0.08 per hour. Add $0.50 of other overhead and the machine cost is about $1.82 per hour.
If a job takes 30 machine minutes and 10 minutes of hands-on labor at $22 per hour, the cost inputs are about $0.91 of machine cost and $3.67 of labor before material, setup and remakes. That does not yet include your profit or selling fees.
Common mistakes
- Dividing the machine price by the number of hours you hope to work, without reserving for maintenance or resale.
- Recording only time with the laser running and omitting setup.
- Using nameplate power as if the entire machine always draws exactly that load.
- Treating the hourly billable rate as if it were pure profit.
How often to revise the rate
Revisit the calculation when you replace the machine, change your expected service life, move to a different electricity tariff, add extraction or increase workshop overhead. The calculation is a planning estimate, so keep the assumptions visible and update them when reality changes.