What lowering the layer height costs
Exactly what you pay for printing finer, why it is less money than you think and where the cost that never shows on the bill actually sits.
Written by Álvaro Melgar Merenciano·
Everybody knows that printing at 0.1 mm takes twice as long as at 0.2. From there nearly everybody concludes that it costs twice as much.
It costs 41 cents more. That is 9%.
And the material does not change: not by one gram. This guide explains where that very small figure comes from and, above all, where the real cost of quality sits — because it exists, just not where people look for it.
First of all: the plastic is the same
Layer height does not change the part, it changes how many slices it is cut into. The volume of plastic that has to be laid down is exactly the same, so the grams do not move.
That already rules out half the sums people do in their heads. The cost table of twenty parts shows that material is around two thirds of the cost of an ordinary part: well, those two thirds have no idea you changed the layer height.
The only thing that moves is the hours. And an hour of printer, counting depreciation and power, costs 13 cents, as broken down in what an hour of 3D printer time costs.
Thirteen cents an hour. That is the whole explanation of why quality comes out cheap.
The layers, counted
We carry on with the same 50 mm cube at 20% infill used by the infill guide: 42.5 grams, always the same. The only thing that changes is how many layers those 50 millimetres are split into.
| Layer height | Layers | Time | Cost | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.10 mm | 500 | 5 h 40 | $4.75 | $7.12 |
| 0.12 mm | 417 | 4 h 44 | $4.61 | $6.92 |
| 0.15 mm | 333 | 3 h 47 | $4.48 | $6.72 |
| 0.20 mm | 250 | 2 h 50 | $4.34 | $6.51 |
| 0.25 mm | 200 | 2 h 16 | $4.26 | $6.39 |
| 0.30 mm | 167 | 1 h 53 | $4.21 | $6.31 |
Between the first row and the last there is three times the time and 54 cents. Your slicer's entire quality scale, end to end, fits inside half a dollar.
You can open them and change whatever you like: at 0.10 mm, at 0.20 mm or at 0.30 mm.
The layer count is exact: height divided by layer height. The time is an honest estimate that assumes doubling the layers doubles the work; on your part it may run a little short or a little long, and the one in charge is the time your slicer gives you.
Why quality comes out so cheap
Broken down, the extra cost of dropping to 0.1 mm is disappointingly simple.
You add 2 hours and 50 minutes of machine time. At 13 cents an hour, with the 10% surcharge for failures, that is 41 cents. End of sum.
The material does not move because the volume is the same. Your time does not either: taking the part off and packing it is the same fifteen minutes whether it took two hours or six.
That is why the percentage is so undramatic: the time doubles and the cost rises 9%. On the selling price, margin included, there are 61 cents between the finest quality and the normal one.
If you have ever hesitated over charging a premium for “high quality”, there is the figure that justifies it in costs. It is small.
Going down costs double; going up does not save half
There is an asymmetry in this setting worth understanding before you use it to buy time.
From 0.2 to 0.1 the time goes up by 2 hours and 50 minutes: it doubles. From 0.2 to 0.3 the time comes down by 57 minutes: it drops a third, not a half.
It is not magic, it is arithmetic. Going from 250 layers to 500 adds 250; going from 250 to 167 only removes 83. Every step downwards hurts twice as much as the equivalent step up.
The practical upshot is useful: if you are short of time, raising the layer height helps less than you expect. To really cut down the queue there is more to gain from printing several parts at once than from wrestling with this setting.
Infill or layer height? Which one to touch first
The two guides together answer a question that each of them alone leaves half finished: if I want this cheaper or faster, which setting do I move?
Starting from the same cube at 20% and 0.2 mm, which costs $4.34 and takes 2 h 50:
| Setting | Cost | Time | Saved | Minutes off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infill at 15% | $4.12 | 2 h 22 | $0.22 | 28 |
| Layer at 0.30 mm | $4.21 | 1 h 53 | $0.14 | 57 |
| Both together | $4.01 | 1 h 35 | $0.34 | 75 |
The division of labour is clean. To use less plastic, infill: it is the only one of the two that touches the grams. To gain time, layer height: it cuts twice as many minutes as infill does.
And if you want the most of both, the two together leave the part at $4.01 and 1 h 35: 34 cents and 75 minutes less. On one part that is small change; on a run of a hundred, it is $34 and 125 hours of free machine.
The full working of the other setting is in what each infill percentage costs.
Where it does cost: the machine tied up
Cheap in money does not mean free. The cost of fine layers is not on the filament bill: it is that the printer cannot be doing anything else.
| Layer height | Machine hours | Days non-stop | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.10 mm | 567 | 23.6 | $475 |
| 0.20 mm | 284 | 11.8 | $434 |
| 0.30 mm | 189 | 7.9 | $421 |
In money, between the first row and the second there are $41. In time there are 283 hours: nearly twelve days of printer running non-stop.
And those 283 hours carry a price that is not the price of electricity. They are a hundred more cubes you could have printed at 0.2 mm in that same stretch. If you have a queue of work, halving the layer height does not cost you 41 dollars: it costs you half your production.
That is the sum hardly anybody does, and it is the right one. The cost of fine layers is not the cost — it is what you stop doing meanwhile.
When fine layers show and when they do not
If it costs so little, the temptation is to print everything fine. It does not pay off, and the reason is not money: on half the parts you cannot see the difference.
Layer height shows on sloped and curved surfaces, where each layer leaves a step. The flatter the surface lies, the wider that step is and the more it shows.
It does not show on vertical walls or on the flat faces top and bottom. A cube, a box, a right-angled bracket: you can print them at 0.3 and notice nothing, because there the layers stack straight and leave no steps to see.
Out of that comes the practical rule: fine for whatever has curves and gets looked at closely — figures, miniatures, cases with radii — and coarse for whatever is straight and functional. A part hidden inside a cabinet does not deserve 500 layers.
And there is a shortcut hardly anybody uses: most slicers allow variable layer height, fine where the part curves and coarse where it does not. It comes out nearly as good as fine and takes nearly as long as coarse.
The ceiling is set by the nozzle
Raising the layer height to go faster has a limit, and it is not an aesthetic one: it is physical.
The rule everybody uses is that the layer should not exceed three quarters of the nozzle diameter. With the 0.4 mm nozzle almost everything ships with, that is 0.3 mm, and that is why the table above stops there.
Above that limit the nozzle cannot press the strand against the previous layer, and what comes out are parts that delaminate: they split between layers in your hand. You gained time and lost the part.
If you want to go genuinely faster, the way is not to push the layer above the limit but to change to a fatter nozzle. With a 0.6 mm one the ceiling rises to 0.45, and the strand is wider, so each pass covers more. You lose fine detail and gain a good deal of time.
Fine layers also multiply the cost of a failure
There is small print on long prints, and it is the same as with high infill: the longer a print runs, the dearer it is when it goes down.
| Layer height | Grams binned | Hours lost | Cost of the failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.10 mm | 34.0 g | 4.5 | $1.27 |
| 0.20 mm | 34.0 g | 2.3 | $0.98 |
| 0.30 mm | 34.0 g | 1.5 | $0.88 |
It is not a huge difference in money — 29 cents between fine and normal — but the time lost really is double, and it has to be done again.
The detail that matters: a six-hour print has more time to go wrong than a three-hour one. The causes, in order, are in why 3D prints fail.
What layer height does not change
Three things stay put however much you move that setting, and it is worth knowing so you do not expect from it what it cannot give.
The filament bill. We have seen it: same volume, same grams. If what you want is to use less plastic, the setting is infill, not this one.
Your time. The fifteen minutes of taking it off, cleaning it and packing it do not depend on how long the machine took.
The dimensions. A finer layer does not make the part more accurate in width: horizontal accuracy is set by the nozzle and the calibration. The only thing that improves is the finish in the vertical.
What sets the layer count is the height, not the size
A detail that gets overlooked: the number of layers does not depend on how big the part is, but on how tall it stands on the plate. A wide flat plate has few layers even if it weighs a lot; a narrow tower has a great many even if it weighs little.
| Part height | At 0.10 mm | At 0.20 mm | At 0.30 mm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 mm | 200 | 100 | 67 |
| 50 mm | 500 | 250 | 167 |
| 100 mm | 1,000 | 500 | 333 |
| 200 mm | 2,000 | 1,000 | 667 |
A 200 mm part at 0.1 mm is two thousand layers. At that point fine layers stop being a finish decision and become a decision about days.
Out of this comes a trick that costs nothing: lay the part down. The same figure on its side can go from 200 mm tall to 60, and with it from 2,000 layers to 600. It changes which surfaces end up looking good and usually calls for supports, but on time there is no setting that comes close.
The first layer does not count
A warning for anyone tempted to push the setting all the way down: the first layer is separate, and almost every slicer treats it on its own on purpose.
That first pass is not after finish, it is after grip. It usually prints thicker — around 0.2 or 0.3 mm — and slower, because it is what holds the part to the plate through all the hours that follow.
Dropping it to the same 0.1 mm as the rest is one of the quickest ways to have a six-hour print come loose in the second hour. And a late release is exactly the expensive failure in the table further up.
The advice is dull but it works: lower the general layer height and leave the first one alone. Nobody sees it, and it holds up everything else.
Do it with your own numbers
This is one of the easiest to check, because only one number changes.
One. Slice your part at the height you always use and write down the time. Do not even look at the grams: they are going to be the same.
Two. Change only the layer height, slice again and write down the new time.
Three. Put both times with the same grams into the cost calculator and look at the difference.
If your result comes out as small as this one, the decision stops being an economic one and becomes the one it always should have been: will anyone see it, and is the machine free?
Want the exact number for your own case? 3D printing cost calculator does the full sum with your filament, your electricity tariff and your printer, and leaves the quote ready to copy.
Frequently asked questions
How much does printing at 0.1 mm instead of 0.2 cost?
41 cents more on the 50 mm cube: from $4.34 to $4.75, 9%. On the selling price, 61 cents.
It is little because the only thing that changes is the hours, and an hour of printer costs 13 cents between depreciation and power.
Does layer height change how much filament you use?
No, not by one gram. The volume of plastic in the part is the same; all that changes is how many layers it is cut into.
If what you are after is using less material, the setting that moves it is infill, not layer height.
Does printing at 0.1 mm take twice as long?
Roughly, yes: the 50 mm cube goes from 250 to 500 layers and from 2 h 50 to 5 h 40.
It is an estimate; on your part it can vary with the shape. The time that counts is the one your slicer gives you.
What is the best layer height?
0.2 mm for nearly everything: it is the point where the finish is already good and the time is still reasonable.
Drop to 0.1 only on curved parts that will be looked at closely, and go up to 0.3 on straight, functional parts where the difference does not show.
What is the maximum layer height?
The usual rule is not to exceed three quarters of the nozzle diameter: with a 0.4 mm nozzle, about 0.3 mm.
Above that, the nozzle cannot press the strand properly onto the previous layer and parts split between layers.
Is it worth charging more for printing at 0.1 mm?
On cost, hardly: it is 61 cents of difference in the selling price of the example part.
What does justify a premium is the machine being tied up: a hundred parts at 0.1 mm are 283 hours more, nearly twelve days of printer.
Do fine layers make the part stronger?
That is not what decides it. For a part to hold, the settings that move the most are perimeters and infill, not layer height.
What fine layers do improve is the finish on sloped and curved surfaces.
What is variable layer height?
A setting that lets the slicer use fine layers where the part curves and coarse ones where it is straight.
It gives a finish close to fine with a time close to coarse, and it is the option with the best balance between the two.
More tools and guides
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