The hours you never bill and what they do to your price
Slicing, hunting for models, photographing, answering messages, learning. All of it is work, and none of it is in the 15 minutes you charge per part.
Written by Álvaro Melgar Merenciano·
Every guide on this site charges 15 minutes of work per part. It is the time to set up the print, get it off the bed, clean it and pack it.
But you know you do not spend fifteen minutes on this. You spend whole evenings.
This guide is about that gap, and about a number that comes out at the end and is not pleasant: if you sell two hundred parts a year and put in five hours a week, your hour is worth $4.27.
What the calculation does count
Let us start with what is already counted, which is not nothing. The calculator pays your labour at $12 an hour, and the guides put 15 minutes on each part.
At two hundred parts a year that is 50 hours of billed work, or $600 that genuinely is inside the price.
And it is counted correctly: those fifteen minutes are real, you do spend them, and every part you sell pays for them. You can see it in the reference part's calculation, where labour accounts for $3.00 of the $5.11 the part costs.
The problem is not what is counted. It is everything else.
What those fifteen minutes leave out
Think back over last week. How much of this did you do?
- Finding or designing the model. Digging through repositories, trying three, none of them fitting, ending up modifying it yourself.
- Slicing and re-slicing. Adjusting orientation, supports, profiles. Looking at the estimated time and not liking it.
- Watching the first layer, which is the stretch where you do not leave the room.
- Photographing the parts to sell them, and editing the photos.
- Writing the listings, the titles, the descriptions, the prices.
- Answering messages from people who ask and do not buy.
- Going to drop off the parcel, to the post office, to buy boxes.
- Learning. Videos, forums, trying a new material, reading up on why that one went wrong.
- The bookkeeping, the invoices, the tax.
None of that is in the fifteen minutes. And none of it is optional: without it there are no parts to sell.
How much of your time is billed
Put in the hours you genuinely spend in a week and look at the last column.
| You spend | A year | Billed | Is billed | Unpaid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 h a week | 104 h | 50 h | 48.1% | $648 |
| 5 h a week | 260 h | 50 h | 19.2% | $2,520 |
| 10 h a week | 520 h | 50 h | 9.6% | $5,640 |
| 20 h a week | 1,040 h | 50 h | 4.8% | $11,880 |
Five hours a week is nothing unusual for someone selling online. And at that rate only 19% of your time is inside the price. The other 210 hours of the year, valued at your own $12 an hour, are $2,520 of work you are giving away.
If you put in ten hours a week, which is half a weekend day plus a few evenings, you drop to 9.6%.
What would happen if you charged for all of it
The logical reaction is: then I will put it in the price. Let us see what comes out if you spread all your hours across the two hundred parts.
| You spend | Minutes per part | Labour | Cost | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you charge today | 15 | $3.00 | $5.11 | $7.66 |
| 2 h a week | 31 | $6.20 | $8.31 | $12.46 |
| 5 h a week | 78 | $15.60 | $17.71 | $26.56 |
| 10 h a week | 156 | $31.20 | $33.31 | $49.96 |
There is the problem head on. At five hours a week, the part you sell for $7.66 would have to cost $26.56. That is three and a half times the price.
You can open both and see it: with 31 minutes and with 78 minutes.
And that price does not sell. Nobody pays $26.56 for a 60 gram printed part they can order elsewhere for ten. So the answer “I will put it in the price” does not work: the sum is right and the conclusion is that the business, at that volume, cannot pay for those hours.
What your hour is actually worth
Let us turn it around, which is the honest way to look at it. Instead of asking what you should charge, let us ask what you are already earning.
Two hundred parts at $7.66 is $1,533 of revenue a year. Out of that comes $422 of material, electricity, machine and failures.
That leaves $1,111 to pay for your time. If you put in five hours a week, that is 260 hours a year:
$1,111 ÷ 260 h = $4.27 an hour.
That is your real rate. Not the $12 the calculator uses: $4.27.
And it is worth saying plainly what that means: it is below any minimum wage in the kind of place you probably live. If the point of this was to make a living, these numbers do not make one.
What actually fixes that number
Before looking at the ways out, it helps to understand why it comes to $4.27 and not something else. The key is that your hours split into two very different kinds.
There are the production hours, which are 15 minutes a part and grow with the number of parts. And there are the others — learning, setting up the shop, taking the photos, replying — which at five hours a week are about 210 a year and which barely grow even if you sell twice as much.
That changes everything, because it means those 210 hours spread across more parts as you grow:
| Parts a year | Total hours | You keep | Your hour |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200 | 260 h | $1,111 | $4.27 |
| 400 | 310 h | $2,222 | $7.17 |
| 800 | 410 h | $4,444 | $10.84 |
| 1,600 | 610 h | $8,888 | $14.57 |
Look at what happens: doubling the parts does not double the hours. From 200 to 400 parts you sell twice as much and only work 50 hours more, because the 210 hours of learning and setting up were already done. That is why your hour goes from $4.27 to $7.17.
And at 990 parts a year — about nineteen a week — you cross the $12 an hour this calculator assumes. From there on you are earning what you say you earn.
This is the underlying reason so many 3D printing ventures never go anywhere: it is not that the prices are wrong, it is that the volume is too low to spread the fixed hours. And low volume is not fixed by raising the price; it is fixed by selling more, or by spending fewer fixed hours.
The three ways out, and there are only three
When the sums do not work, the options are few and worth facing directly.
One: more parts. This is what we just saw: the fixed hours spread across more units. This table says it the other way round, the practical one: how many parts it would take for your hours to match the fifteen minutes you already charge.
| If you spend | Parts a year | A week |
|---|---|---|
| 2 h a week | 416 | 8 |
| 5 h a week | 1,040 | 20 |
| 10 h a week | 2,080 | 40 |
Two: fewer hours. Not by working worse, but by cutting what is not needed. Repeating models you have already sliced, reusing the same photos, not redesigning every order from scratch. The 2 h a week row comes out nearly balanced: 416 parts a year is eight a week, and that is reachable.
Three: accepting that part of it is a hobby. And that is a perfectly valid answer, as long as it is a decision and not an oversight. If of your five weekly hours two are work and three are the bit you enjoy, there is nothing to fix. What does not work is believing you earn $12 an hour when you earn $4.27.
What should go in the fifteen minutes
Having said all that, there are hours that do belong to the part and that many people leave out by oversight. Those should go in, and they are what pushes the 15 minutes up:
- Removing supports and sanding. That is time on that specific part. If it takes you five minutes, those five minutes go in the field, and they cost $1.00: it is measured in what the plastic you bin costs.
- Packing it. Also the part's, and also usually around five minutes.
- Slicing, if the model is new. On a custom order that time belongs entirely to it. On a model you repeat, it spreads across every time you print it.
What does not go there is the time to design a model you will sell many times: that is charged separately and has its own calculation in how to charge for design time.
If you add cleaning and packing, the default 15 minutes falls short for almost anyone. Twenty-five minutes is a more realistic figure for a part with supports that gets posted.
Measuring your own this week
You do not need detailed tracking. You need one week of honesty.
One. For seven days, note on your phone every stretch of time you spend on this. Just the number of minutes, nothing else. Include the ten minutes of slicing over dinner and the half hour on Sunday answering messages.
Two. Add it up and multiply by 52. Those are your hours for the year.
Three. Take what you took in last year, subtract everything that is not your time — filament, electricity, postage, spares, fees — and divide by your hours.
That number is your real rate. If it comes out above the $12 this calculator uses, congratulations, and put your labour rate up. If it comes out at $4.27, you know which of the three ways out is yours.
What matters is not that the number is high. It is that you know it: you cannot decide whether something is worth doing without knowing what you are being paid to do it.
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 time should you charge for a 3D printed part?
The guides on this site use 15 minutes a part at $12 an hour, which is $3.00 of the $5.11 the reference part costs.
With support removal and packing, 25 minutes is a more realistic figure for a part that gets posted.
What percentage of my hours am I actually billing?
Selling 200 parts a year at 15 minutes charged per part, you bill 50 hours a year. If you put in five hours a week, that is 19.2% of your time.
At ten hours a week it drops to 9.6%: nine of every ten hours you put in are inside no price at all.
What is my hour really worth selling 3D prints?
At 200 parts at $7.66, revenue is $1,533 a year and material, electricity, machine and failures come to $422: that leaves $1,111 for your time.
Spread across the 260 hours of five hours a week, that is $4.27 an hour.
Can I put all my hours into the price?
You can do the sum, but the result does not sell: at five hours a week the part would have to cost $26.56 instead of $7.66, three and a half times more.
What that number says is not that you should raise the price, but that the business at that volume cannot pay for those hours.
How many parts do you need to sell for the hours to add up?
At two hours a week, 416 parts a year, which is eight a week. At five hours a week, 1,040 a year, or twenty a week.
It works because the hours spent learning, photographing or setting up the shop are almost the same selling 200 parts as selling 800.
What work goes inside the minutes per part?
Whatever belongs to that specific part: removing supports, sanding, cleaning and packing. Five minutes of cleaning is $1.00 at $12 an hour.
What does not go there is the time to design a model you will sell many times: that is charged separately.
Is it bad that some of the time goes unpaid?
No, as long as it is a conscious decision. Plenty of people spend part of their hours on this because they enjoy it, and that is perfectly valid.
What does not work is believing you earn $12 an hour when you earn $4.27: without knowing the number you cannot decide anything.
How do I measure the hours I actually spend?
For one week, note the minutes of every stretch you spend on your phone, including the ten minutes of slicing over dinner. Add them up and multiply by 52.
Then take what you took in last year, subtract everything that is not your time, and divide by those hours.
More tools and guides
How much does 3D printing cost: 20 parts with real numbersThe real cost of 20 typical 3D printed parts: keyring, planter, phone stand, gear and more, with their grams, their hours and a link to recalculate.
Why 3D prints fail and what it really costs youA failure halfway through costs 2.96 €, and only 32% of that is material. The four causes in order, with the real annual cost of each failure rate.
How long does a 1 kg filament spool lastHow many metres and how many parts you get from a 1 kg spool, by material and diameter. Tables for PLA, PETG and ABS, and how to gauge what is left.
3D printing cost calculatorWork out the real cost and selling price of a 3D printed part: material, power, machine wear, failures and markup. Free, no sign-up, nothing uploaded.
How much to charge for a 3D printed partPrice your prints properly: real cost, your labour and your markup. Generates a quote you can copy and send straight to the customer.
How much electricity does a 3D printer useWork out your 3D printer's power use and what it costs per month on your own tariff. With the average wattage of the most common models.