Filament Is Not the Cost

A 3D-printing business plan claimed a 79 to 83 percent margin on a wholesale souvenir dish. Its own follow-up memo, written six weeks later, found the real figure was 27 to 42 percent, because the first number counted filament and nothing else. Fully loaded, the dish earns about five dollars per machine-hour. A personalised keychain on the same printer earns thirty-nine.

That reversal is the book. The binding constraint in a small printing business is not material cost, it is machine-hours, and the moment you rank a product line by revenue per machine-hour instead of by margin, the ranking changes and the proudest product usually falls.

Includes the full cost model with every line named, a worked example end to end, and a decision rule for when a second machine is the answer and when it is not.

A planning tool, not advice. Every constant is specific to one operator, one machine and one city, and must be re-measured against your own numbers.

PDF ebook, 32 pages.