What to Charge for CNC Plasma Work
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Most small plasma shops undercharge. Not by a little — by half, sometimes worse. And it is nearly always the same cause: the price came from what felt reasonable, or from what somebody else on Facebook was charging, rather than from what the work actually costs to do.
The fix is not confidence. It is arithmetic.
The four numbers
Everything you charge should be built from these, in this order.
1. Material. What the steel cost, including the part you threw away. If you buy a 4x8 sheet and get eleven signs out of it, the cost of one sign is the sheet divided by eleven — not by however many would theoretically fit if there was no waste. Nesting is never perfect. Use what you actually got.
2. Machine time. Your table is worth something per hour and most people price it at zero because they already own it. That is the single most common error in this business. The table cost money, consumables wear out, and the hour you spend cutting is an hour you cannot spend on something else. Put a real number on it.
3. Consumables. Tips and electrodes have a pierce count, and every pierce spends part of one. A design with sixty pierces costs meaningfully more to cut than one with eight, even at the same size. If you have never tracked pierces per tip, start — it is the hidden cost that quietly eats the margin on detailed work.
4. Finish and labour. Degreasing, priming, painting, sealing, hanging hardware, packaging. This is usually the biggest single line and the one people forget entirely. Sanding and painting a sign takes longer than cutting it.
Add those four and you have your cost. Not your price. Your cost.
Then the multiplier
Cost is the floor. What goes on top depends on what you are selling and to whom.
- Generic decoration — the thinnest margins, because the customer can compare you directly to somebody else.
- Personalized work — much better, because there is nothing to compare it to.
- Trade and shop work — better again, because the buyer is spending business money and values not having to think about it.
- Rush work — charge for it properly. A rush job disrupts everything else in the queue, and the person asking already knows they are asking for a favour.
If a number makes you uncomfortable to say out loud, that is usually a sign it is closer to right than the one you were about to say.
What undercharging actually costs
It is not just the money on that job. Price too low and you fill your calendar with work that barely covers costs, which leaves no room for the jobs that would have paid properly. You end up busy, tired, and no further ahead — and putting the price up later with the same customers is far harder than starting at the right number.
Do it once, properly
Work out your rate one time, write it down, and use it. Rebuild it when steel prices move or when you change machines, not every time somebody pushes back.
The [free shop rate and quote calculator](/cnc-plasma-machine-free-business-tools) does this from your own numbers — your steel cost, your machine, your consumables, your finish time. It gives you a rate you can defend rather than a rule of thumb you half believe.
If you want the wider business side as well — where the customers are, how to sell without discounting — the [free CNC plasma business toolkit](/the-free-cnc-plasma-business-toolkit) covers that ground.
One last thing
Track your actual times for a month. Not estimates — real times, written down, from sheet to finished part. Almost everybody discovers the finishing takes twice as long as they thought and the cutting takes half. You cannot price work accurately until you know which half of the job you are actually being paid for.
More free tools and files are on the [free CNC plasma cut files](/blog/free-cnc-plasma-cut-files) page.
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Hi, I'm Charles Woten
Owner : Tin Man Metal Works
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