How to Handle Failed Prints in Your Pricing

Print failures are not a freak event — they're a recurring cost of doing business. Pricing them into your quotes is the difference between a sustainable shop and a slow-bleed hobby.

Why failures aren't free

A failed print costs:

• Wasted material (full or partial)
• Wasted machine hours (cannot be reclaimed)
• Wasted electricity
• Cleanup time (often more than a successful removal)
• Sometimes: a damaged bed, FEP, or nozzle

A "5% failure rate" sounds small. On a $40 quoted job, it means across 20 jobs you absorb a $40 loss — wiping out the profit on one job entirely.

Realistic failure rates by category

Be honest:

Job type	Realistic failure rate
Small simple FDM (under 5 hr)	3–5%
Medium FDM	5–10%
Large FDM (over 24 hr)	10–18%
Multi-color (AMS/MMU)	12–20%
Resin minis	8–15%
Large resin	15–25%
Functional fit parts	15–30% (often need iteration)
New customer's first file	+5% to whatever the above says

If your tracked failure rate doesn't match these, you're either much better than average (rare, congratulations) or you're not counting cosmetic failures and reprints.

How to price it in

Multiply your subtotal by (1 + failure rate):

adjustedSubtotal = subtotal × (1 + failureRate)

For a $30 job at 10% failure: $33. Across enough jobs, that $3 surcharge funds the failures.

Some people prefer to add a flat "reprint guarantee" line of 8–12% rather than burying it. Both work. The disclosed approach builds trust; the embedded approach simplifies the quote.

Tracking your real failure rate

Use a simple sheet:

Date	Job	Hours	Material	Failed?	Why

Update it after every print. After 50 prints you'll have honest data. Most shops discover their real rate is 2–3× their assumed rate.

What to do when a paid customer's print fails

The customer doesn't care that it's normal. They care that they don't have their part.

Standard response:

1. Email within 2 hours of discovery. Don't hide it.
2. Apologize once, briefly. Don't grovel.
3. State your action: "Reprinting now, will ship by Tuesday."
4. Don't offer a discount unless they ask. Many won't.
5. If they do ask, 10–15% is fair. Don't go to 50% — you're losing money and the customer learns to complain.

The single worst response is silence. The second worst is missing a delivery date you've extended.

Some failures aren't yours

If the customer's file is unprintable (sub-mm walls, non-manifold, unsupported geometry), say so before quoting. Add this to your terms:

"Files that fail to print due to model defects (sub-mm walls, non-manifold geometry, unprintable overhangs without supports) will require either a revised file or a +15% retry surcharge."

This trains customers to send better files and protects you from absorbing a hundred reprints of someone else's modeling error.

When to refuse a job

Some jobs are failure factories:

• Articulated print-in-place with 50+ joints requested in PETG
• 80-hour single prints with no checkpoints
• "Just slice this Sketchfab download and ship it" (often a mesh disaster)

Refusing a job is cheaper than absorbing three failed attempts on a $60 quote.

Software help

Makerate's failure factor field applies to every quote automatically. Set it once per material type (resin at 12%, PLA at 6%, multi-color at 15%) and it's never forgotten on a quote again.