Printer Depreciation: How Much to Charge Per Hour

Your printer is a depreciating asset. If you don't charge customers for its eventual replacement, your "profit" is actually capital you're burning.

The basic formula

hourly machine cost = (purchase price + lifetime service cost) / expected lifetime hours

That's the depreciation rate you need to bake into every quote.

What counts as service cost

• Nozzles ($2–15 each, every 500–1500 hrs)
• Hotends ($30–80, every 2000–5000 hrs)
• Belts ($10–30, every 3000 hrs)
• Build plates ($20–60, every 12–24 months)
• For resin: FEP/nFEP ($5–15, every 30–60 prints), LCD ($60–200, every 1500–2500 hrs)
• Lubricants, fans, sensors

Add it all up across the printer's expected life. Don't forget the firmware will get worse and the warranty will expire.

Expected lifetime hours

A realistic figure for a well-maintained printer:

• Entry FDM (Ender, Kobra): 2,500–3,500 hrs before major rebuild
• Mid FDM (A1, MK4): 4,000–6,000 hrs
• Pro FDM (X1C, MK4S, Voron): 6,000–10,000 hrs
• Entry MSLA: 2,000–3,000 hrs (LCD replacements extend this)
• Pro MSLA / SLA: 4,000–8,000 hrs

Industrial machines (Markforged, HP MJF, Stratasys) run on a totally different economics model — not covered here.

Worked examples

Bambu A1 Combo

• Purchase: $560
• Service over 3 years: $250 (nozzles, hotend swap, build plate, AMS service)
• Lifetime: 4,500 hrs

($560 + $250) / 4500 = $0.18/hr

Prusa MK4S

• Purchase: $1,100
• Service over 4 years: $400
• Lifetime: 7,000 hrs

($1,100 + $400) / 7000 = $0.21/hr

Bambu X1C with AMS

• Purchase: $1,400
• Service over 4 years: $600 (hotends, AMS service, lidar calibration, fans)
• Lifetime: 7,500 hrs

($1,400 + $600) / 7500 = $0.27/hr

Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra

• Purchase: $400
• Service over 3 years: $450 (LCD ×2, FEP ×40, vat service)
• Lifetime: 3,500 hrs

($400 + $450) / 3500 = $0.24/hr

What about printer-farm economics?

If you have 10 printers running concurrently, your per-machine depreciation is the same — but your fixed overhead (rent, monitoring, shelving) is now spread across more output. Most farms end up at $0.30–0.55/machine-hour after all costs are baked in.

The "I'll just replace it from profit" mistake

A common hobbyist argument: "I'll just buy a new printer when this dies, out of profit."

The math doesn't work. If your printer dies in year 3 and you've never charged for depreciation, your replacement comes out of your real margin, not out of the customer's quote. You're a year behind every time, and the customer who broke the machine isn't paying for its replacement — the next ten customers are.

Charge the rate. Makerate computes it automatically when you add a printer — purchase price, lifetime hours, and service cost in, hourly rate out, applied to every quote.