The Real Cost of Running a Laser Cutter
Tube and diode wear, power draw, extraction, overhead and your own time add up to a real per-hour cost of running a laser. Here's how to turn all of it into one hourly rate you can quote from.
Ask a room of laser owners what it costs to run their machine for an hour and you’ll get answers from “basically nothing” to “no idea.” Both are expensive answers. Here’s every piece of the real number.
1. Tube or diode wear
A CO₂ laser tube is a consumable. A glass tube might cost $250–$3,000 depending on wattage and last 1,500–8,000 hours before its output drops too far to be usable. Divide one by the other and you get a wear cost per hour:
- $1,400 tube ÷ 4,000 hours = $0.35/hr
- $2,750 tube ÷ 4,000 hours = $0.69/hr
Diode machines wear more slowly but still degrade, and the modules aren’t free to replace — treat them the same way. This cost is invisible until the day the tube dies and you’re suddenly out four figures you never set aside.
2. Power the machine actually draws
A laser’s rated wattage is its optical output, not its wall draw. A 100W CO₂ machine with its chiller, exhaust fan and air assist running pulls somewhere around 2–4 kW in total. At an Australian rate of $0.30–$0.55 per kWh, that’s roughly $0.60–$2.20 an hour while it’s cutting. Rapid moves (no beam) draw less; idling with the chiller on still draws something.
Don’t forget the standing cost of the supply itself — the daily service-to-property charge on your power bill is part of being open for business, whether you cut that day or not.
3. Overhead
Everything that costs money whether or not a specific job exists: workshop or garage space, contents and public-liability insurance, design software subscriptions, extraction filter media, lens and mirror cleaning supplies, air-assist compressor servicing, masking tape, replacement slats. Add it up for a year and divide by the hours you realistically run the machine. For a lot of small shops this alone is $5–$15 an hour.
4. Your time while it runs
Unless you have a fully enclosed, fire-safe, monitored setup, you’re in the room while the machine cuts — watching for flare-ups, swapping material, checking focus. That hour is your labour even though the machine is “doing the work.” If you value your time at $50–$70 an hour (you should), that goes into the running cost too.
Putting it together
A worked example for a 100W CO₂ machine:
- Tube wear: $0.35
- Electricity (cutting): $1.20
- Daily supply charge, spread over run hours: $0.30
- Overhead: $10.00
- Your time: $60.00
That’s about $72 an hour all-in — and most of it is your time, which is the honest part people leave out. Even if you strip your own labour back out to price it separately, the machine itself is costing you $12+ an hour before you’ve made a dollar.
What this means for quoting
Work this number out once, write it down, and revisit it whenever power prices move or you replace the tube. Then every quote starts from cut time × your real rate — not a guess, and not “the electricity was only 20 cents.”
The calculator below has fields for each of these inputs — tube cost and life, power draw, overhead, your labour rate — and turns them into a per-minute machine rate automatically. Set it up once with your real figures and it carries into every quote.
Related: the full pricing method and common pricing mistakes. For sheet material specifically, the Material Cost & Waste Estimator works out cost per part and offcut waste.