Laser Engraving Rates

[Eddie Castaneda]

Its been awhile since I posted but heres my question. What's the average rate for Laser Engraving. Customers will provide material . I am just curious on an average.

[Dan Hintz]

Its been awhile since I posted but heres my question. What's the average rate for Laser Engraving. Customers will provide material . I am just curious on an average.

The questions makes no sense. A Trotec will engrave an image in half of the time of an Epilog/ ULS system, but I'm not going to charge half of the price because I'm faster than the guy down the street (in fact, I'd probably charge more because I can get your project done in a rush).

You charge what the market will bear in your area. For some, that comes out to $50-60/hr, for others it's closer to $150-200/hr. If you price by the project rather than time, I've seen rates as high as $4-500/hr when all was said and done.

[Eddie Castaneda]

Its a little early for me here on the west coast. But you answered my question!

[Joe Hillmann]

For single or small numbers of parts, if the customer brings the items in the price usually goes up because of the extra work involved compared to a part that I stock, have art work layouts set up for and laser settings for.

If it is something very simple such as putting a name and or date on one area of an item I will charge $15. If they have two items that are identical but they want different names engraved on them I charge $15 for the first and $10 for the second. If it is two identical parts with identical engraving I may go down to $10 each.

For single items done on the yag that in some cases breaks down to around $200 an hour. Using the same pricing on single items it may break down to only $60 per item. When I am doing larger numbers of items the prices go way down per item and may only be a buck or two each with the set up fees spread out over all of them.

[Bill Cunningham]

$25.00 setup, & 1.20 per sq. inch for wood,glass,etc.. Cermark on stainless is $3.50 per sq inch w/5 sq inch minimum for non commercial, and 10sq. inches for commercial.. I don't do wholesale..

[Joe Pelonio]

An hourly rate that covers your time at what you think it is worth plus something to compensate for the wear and tear on your machine, which will need replacement parts in time is helpful as you start out. Eventually you will become more aware of what others are charging and find that you may be short changing yourself. I will do some wholesale work for sign shops at te low end of the range Dan mentioned, but for personalizing one-off jobs for individuals the high end.

You don't want to pay yourself minimum wage, you have invested in expensive equipment and in a lot of time to learn a skill that others don't have so make it pay. I recently engraved the glass top on a humidor and the customer let it slip that she had been quoted $60 elsewhere.
My price was still $75 and she paid it willingly.Took about 15 minutes, that's about $300/hour.

[Dan Hintz]

My price was still $75 and she paid it willingly.Took about 15 minutes, that's about $300/hour.

Does that 15 minutes include the time spent with the customer from the moment they contacted you to the time they walked out with their item, time to lay out the design, time to do the paperwork/receipt, etc.? When people start including all of the little details that are easy to forget about, they realize their hourly rate isn't nearly as high as they think it is. I'm guilty of it.

[tommy suriady]

Over here in indonesia, i charge by the minute. At about 80cents per minute. That is the assumed laser running time. What i do is to get the length of the path i am cutting, then divide by a known speed for my laser. Eg 1m/min for 3mm acrylics, 50cm for 4mm plywood, etc.

I do for interior contractors, so i cant give different rate at different times.

Each project usually runs into the hundreds or even thousands of usd so it is pretty good for me.

i charge setup fee for small jobs. But it is pretty rare.

[Mike Troncalli]

We do both custom pieces and engrave pre-manufactured product (i.e JDS) and resale at wholesale. We really try to stay away from the "one offs" but we have a $25.00 setup fee which we will wave if you order a minimum # of units. The absolute minimum that we will charge is $1.00 per minute but in most cases find that our machine makes us around 2 - 6 dollars per minute.