Almost every workshop that starts quoting laser cutting makes the same mistake: pricing by metres of cut × price per metre. It is fast, it is convenient… and it is exactly why many lose money on small parts and give away margin on the big ones.
A laser price stands on four legs
1. The material you actually consume
Not the area of the part: the piece of sheet that becomes unusable. An L-shaped 300×300 mm part does not consume 9 dm²; it consumes what it takes up inside the nesting layout, plus the offcut you can no longer use. That is why nesting is not cosmetic — it is what separates a real price from an optimistic guess.
2. Machine time, with real kinematics
The classic error is dividing the perimeter by the catalogue speed. That speed is only reached on long straight runs. In reality you must count acceleration and braking at every change of direction, speed reduction on small radii, the initial pierce on every closed contour, lead-in and lead-out, and the rapid moves between contours.
On a part with 40 small holes, piercing time can be half the total. If your price ignores it, you are cutting for free.
3. What happens before and after the machine
Preparing the file, nesting, loading the sheet, removing the skeleton, separating parts, inspecting and packing. That is people-time, and it appears in no machine parameter. An order of 3 parts and one of 300 have nearly identical setup cost — which is why short runs need a minimum charge.
4. Everything the laser does not do
Bending, tapping, countersinking, inserts, painting, galvanising. Each with its own pricing logic: bending is not charged per metre, it is charged per bend and by how awkward the part is to handle.
The reality check
Take a part you have already made and ask yourself: how much material ended up as scrap, and who paid for it? How long did the machine really run, piercing included? How many people-minutes surrounded the cut? If you cannot answer one of them, that is where your margin is leaking.