Home › Calculators › Fiber laser marking cost calculator (per part)
Fiber laser marking cost calculator (per part)
Galvo marking is not sold by the metre. The beam moves at thousands of mm/s, so the mark is often the fastest part of the job — the money is in the cycle: load, align, mark, unload, repeated across a batch, with the setup spread over it. This prices a marking job the way marking shops actually quote it.
Why marking is priced per part
On a gantry cutter, price tracks path length — twice the cut, roughly twice the time. A galvo steers the beam with mirrors instead of moving a head, at speeds in the thousands of mm/s, so a serial number that would take a CO2 machine a minute takes a fiber a couple of seconds. Once the mark itself is that fast, it stops being the cost driver. What is left is:
- Handling — picking up the part, seating it, focusing, unloading. Per part, every part.
- Setup — fixture, file, test piece. Once per job, spread across the batch.
- The part itself — often the largest single number on a marking quote.
This is why two jobs with the same artwork can differ several-fold in price: a flat tag that drops into a jig and a curved bottle that has to be clamped on a rotary are not the same job, even though the mark is identical.
The handling trap
The most common mistake in marking quotes is pricing the mark and forgetting the cycle. A 4-second mark with 35 seconds of handling is not a 4-second job — it is a 39-second job in which you are selling fixturing. When the calculator tells you marking is a small fraction of the cycle, the highest-return improvement is almost never a faster laser. It is a jig that holds six parts instead of one.
Cutting instead of marking?
If the job is cutting or vector engraving on a CO2 or diode gantry machine, this is the wrong tool — price follows path length there. Drop the file into the main calculator and it measures every contour and prices by machine time. For choosing between the machine types in the first place, see fiber, MOPA, galvo and UV lasers explained.
FAQ
Why can't I price fiber marking per metre like laser cutting?
Because the cost driver is different. In cutting, price tracks cut length: a longer path takes proportionally longer. In galvo marking the beam is steered by mirrors at thousands of mm per second, so the marking itself is often only a few seconds, and the real cost is the cycle - loading, aligning, focusing and unloading each part - plus the one-off setup amortised across the batch. Two jobs with identical mark geometry can differ 5x in price purely on fixturing.
What is a realistic handling time per part?
Roughly 5-10 seconds for a flat tag dropped on a jig with a hard stop, 15-30 seconds for a part that needs aligning or focusing, and 30-90 seconds for a tumbler or bottle on a rotary axis, or anything that has to be clamped. If handling is more than about three times your mark time, you are being paid for fixturing rather than marking, and a better jig returns more than a faster laser.
How accurate is the time estimate?
Treat it as a sanity check, not a quote. Marking speed depends on the exact material, the finish you are aiming for, your lens and your machine's delay settings, and the same part can vary several-fold between a light anneal and a deep engrave. The reliable method is a time trial: mark one part, time the cycle with a stopwatch, and enter that measured figure in the first mode. The estimator exists for when you do not have the machine or the part in front of you yet.
Should setup time be charged to the customer?
Yes, but amortised. Fixture building, file preparation and the test piece happen once regardless of whether the batch is 10 parts or 1,000. Spreading that across the batch is what makes large runs cheap per part and small runs expensive, and it is the honest way to explain a price difference to a customer. This calculator shows the setup share per part so you can see exactly when a batch becomes worth quoting.
Why is my price per part so high on small batches?
Setup dominates. At a quantity of 10, a 20-minute setup adds two minutes of billable time to every single part, which can easily exceed the marking time itself. That is why marking shops quote a minimum order and why the per-part price falls steeply up to a few hundred pieces and then flattens. Either raise the minimum or push the customer to a larger batch - discounting a small batch just means working for free.
Does this calculator work for CO2 or diode cutting?
No, and it should not. Cutting and vector engraving on a gantry machine scale with path length, so use the main GetLaserQuote calculator, which measures every contour in your SVG, DXF or PDF and prices by machine time. This tool is for galvo marking, where price is per part and per cycle. Use whichever matches how the job is actually run.