Laser Cutting Cost Calculator

Free tool

Laser cutting time & cost estimator

Estimate cycle time and cost per part from cut length, pierce count, thickness and material. Built for quoting, with the assumptions written down so you can argue with them.

Material

Laser power

Thickness (mm)

Quantity

Cut length per part (mm)

Pierces per part

Rapid speed (mm/min)

Currency

Machine rate (per hour)

Material cost per part

Cut speed—

Cutting time / part—

Piercing time / part—

Rapid moves / part—

Cycle time / part—

Total run time—

Machine cost—

Material cost—

Cost per part—

Order total—

How the time is worked out

Cutting time = Cut length ÷ Cut speed

Piercing time = Pierces × Pierce duration(thickness, material)

Rapid time = Pierces × 200 mm average move ÷ Rapid speed

Cycle time = Cutting + Piercing + Rapid

Cost = (Total time × Machine rate) + (Material × Quantity)

Cut speed is taken from the table below and interpolated between thicknesses. Pierce duration follows 0.15 × t^1.35 seconds, scaled by material.

The 200 mm average rapid move is a rough stand-in for head travel between contours. On a densely nested sheet it will be less; on scattered single parts it will be more. If you know your real figure, adjust the rapid speed to compensate, or treat the rapid line as noise — on most jobs it is a small share of the total.

Indicative cut speeds — mm/min

Mild steel with oxygen. Stainless and aluminium use nitrogen and are handled separately in the tool.

Thickness	1 kW	2 kW	3 kW	6 kW
1 mm	8000	9000	10000	12000
2 mm	3500	5000	6000	8000
3 mm	2600	3600	4300	6000
5 mm	1600	2400	3000	4200
8 mm	900	1400	1800	2600
10 mm	700	1100	1400	2000
12 mm	—	850	1100	1600
20 mm	—	—	600	850

These are indicative, not your machine. Published cutting speeds sit in a range, and the number you actually achieve depends on the source, the cutting head, nozzle condition, gas purity and pressure, focus position, and how tired the lens is. Treat this as a quoting estimate that gets you within sensible range — then correct it against your own job logs. If your controller reports a different figure for the same job, believe the controller.

What is not included

Sheet load and unload, part sorting, programming and nesting time, machine warm-up, and any deburring or secondary operations. On short runs these often outweigh the cutting itself — a 20-second part can carry two minutes of handling. Add your own handling allowance before quoting.

The single biggest lever on cost here is not speed, it is pierce count. Every pierce costs time and risks a defect. If a design has forty holes that could be twenty, that is a real saving you can take to the customer — and it is exactly the kind of thing a DFMA review catches before tooling.

Want the drawings behind the quote?

We are GMR3D Engineering, a mechanical design studio. Production-ready CAD and manufacturing files for sheet metal, laser cutting, CNC machining, 3D printing and injection molding.

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