Laser Cutting Cost Per Part
Fiber laser cutting costs in production — per part, per sheet, and per hour. What drives pricing and where the savings are.
Shop rates
Fiber laser cutting runs $100-250/hour for the machine, but most shops don't quote by the hour. They quote by the part, because modern fiber lasers cut so fast that hourly pricing would confuse customers. A 12" x 12" bracket in 16-gauge mild steel takes 15-30 seconds to cut. At $150/hour, that's $0.63-1.25 in cut time. Material cost exceeds machine time on most thin-gauge work.
What drives per-part cost
Material type and thickness. Fiber lasers cut mild steel up to 1" thick, stainless to 0.750", and aluminum to 0.500" with clean edges. Beyond these thicknesses, cut quality degrades and speed drops dramatically. Reflective materials (copper, brass) are cuttable on modern fiber lasers but require more power and slower speeds.
Nesting efficiency. Parts are nested onto standard sheet sizes (48x96", 48x120", 60x120"). More parts per sheet = lower material cost per part. A skilled nesting programmer can get 85-95% material utilization on simple geometries. Complex shapes with poor nesting efficiency waste material and drive up cost.
Pierce count and small features. Every pierce takes 0.2-2 seconds. Parts with many internal cutouts (perforated patterns, louvers, slots) have high pierce counts that add up. Small features (holes under 1x material thickness) require special pierce techniques and slower cutting.
Typical pricing
| Part description | Material | Per piece (100) | Per piece (1,000) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6" x 6" bracket, 4 holes | 16 ga mild steel | $2.50-4.00 | $1.25-2.00 |
| 12" x 24" panel, complex profile | 0.125" aluminum | $5.00-9.00 | $3.00-5.50 |
| Flange, 8" OD, 4" ID | 0.250" stainless | $6.00-10.00 | $3.50-6.00 |
| Base plate 18" x 18" | 0.500" mild steel | $15-25 | $10-16 |
These include material and cutting. They don't include deburring, hardware insertion, bending (separate operation), or finishing (paint, powder coat, plating). Secondary operations often cost more than the laser cutting itself.
Volume breaks
Laser cutting has almost no setup cost — the program loads in seconds, the sheet loads in 30-60 seconds. This means per-part pricing is nearly flat from 1 piece to 100 pieces. The savings at higher volume come from nesting optimization and material purchasing (buying full sheets vs partial).
At 1,000+ pieces, automated sheet loading and lights-out operation reduce labor cost per part. At 10,000+ pieces, shops negotiate material pricing and may dedicate a machine. But the per-part savings above 1,000 are incremental — laser cutting doesn't have the dramatic volume breaks that machining does.