Pocket ERP · 3D printing
Know what a print costs before you quote it
Filament, electricity, machine wear, purge waste and the marketplace’s cut. One screen, at the machine, in about ten seconds. Then log the print in three taps and watch the spool come down.
Four screens, and a stepper
One 24-hour print, priced two ways
The rule of thumb charges for the plastic. Here is everything it does not charge for.
One 24-hour ASA print
- Filament in the model
- 620 g$17.98
- Purge, prime and brim
- 74 g$2.15
- Electricity
- 24 h · ASA$1.60
- Machine wear
- 24 h$5.82
- Your hands
- 25 min$11.67
- Reprint reserve
- 6%$1.70
- Packaging
- $0.80
Priced at 3× filament
$53.94
$6.65 kept
after Etsy’s 9.5% + $0.45
Priced by Printyard
$66.74
$18.24 kept
after Etsy’s 9.5% + $0.45
Every figure above is computed by the same module the app uses, from a 620 g ASA print on a $1,199 machine at $0.17/kWh. Change any of those in the app and the arithmetic follows.
Three ways a print farm loses money without noticing
The 3× rule
It prices the plastic and nothing else
A 24-hour ASA run draws roughly three times the power of the same print in PLA, and takes a day of machine life with it. Triple the filament cost and you have charged for none of that.
The purge bin
You paid for what went in the waste box
A multi-colour plate can purge more filament than it puts into the model, as high as 50 to 113% of print weight on a four-colour change. That is filament you bought and threw away, unbilled.
The spreadsheet
It doesn’t open at the machine
Fifty tabs that started small and mutated. It can’t warn you a spool is 40 grams short of finishing an overnight print, because it only knows what you remembered to type into it yesterday.
Set it up once, then it is arithmetic
No keyboard at the machine, no Docker container, no spreadsheet that opens badly on a phone.
- 01
Tell it what you print on
One printer, one spool, your grid price. Two minutes, and every quote after that is built on real numbers instead of a guess.
- 02
Quote at the machine
Pick a material, set grams and hours with two steppers. Filament, power, wear, purge, reprint reserve and the marketplace’s cut, itemised, with the price and what you net beneath it.
- 03
Log the print before you walk away
Three taps. The spool’s weight comes down, the job’s margin is booked, and the month updates. Works with no signal and syncs when you’re back in range.
Price the next one properly.
Buy once. Sign in on your iPhone at the machine, or in your browser at the desk — it is the same shop either way.
Printyard Pro
One mispriced commission costs more than a year of this. So does one 24-hour print that runs out of filament at hour nineteen.
- Monthly
- $9.99
- Yearly
- $69.99
- Lifetime
- $149.99
Or start a 3-day free trial in the iPhone app, then monthly or yearly. The lifetime unlock is sold here only.
