Hone your 3D printing: price it right, keep the margin
Knowing your slicer is half the job. Knowing your numbers is the half that pays.
You already dialed in your printer. This is the other dial: pricing that survives failed prints, marketplace fees, and shipping, and still leaves you a margin. Here is where 3D printing quietly loses money, and where it makes it back.
Where the margin leaks
The pricing traps that quietly cost makers money.
Forgetting failed prints
A 12% failure rate is not 12% fewer sales. It is 12% more filament, time, and electricity loaded onto every print that does sell. Price the buffer in, or it comes out of your pocket one stringy benchy at a time.
Pricing by weight alone
Grams are the cheap part. A 3-hour print of forty cents of PLA still ate 3 hours of machine time and your attention. Meter the time, not just the spool.
Free shipping that is not free
Offering free shipping over a threshold feels generous until the postage comes out of your take-home. Decide to absorb it on purpose, with the number in front of you, not out of habit.
Where the money is
The levers that actually move your take-home.
Batch the plate
Fixed costs (the listing fee, the setup, the box) hit once per order, not once per part. A full plate of one product spreads them thin. Anvil prices a project run as one product, so the math follows the box.
A higher success rate is free money
The cheapest margin win is fewer failures. Five logged jobs in, Anvil swaps the assumed failure buffer for your real one, so a reliable product stops paying for a flaky one.
Bill design and setup once
Customization, slicing, and supports are real labor. Charge them as a one-time line, not smeared into a per-unit price that scares off the big order.
What to track
The few numbers worth watching.
Failure rate
The single number that moves your true cost the most. Log every job, done and failed, and let Anvil learn it instead of guessing.
Dollars per machine hour
Not per print. Per hour. It tells you which products are worth the printer's time and which are just keeping it warm.
Take-home, not sticker
The list price is not what you keep. Watch the take-home on the seller dashboard, after fees and any absorbed shipping.
Set Anvil up for it
How to make Anvil price your craft the honest way.
Drop the real G-code
Anvil reads the time and grams straight off your slicer file, so the estimate is your print, not a round number.
Set electricity by ZIP
On the Assumptions form, type your ZIP for your state's real cents per kWh instead of a national average.
List every shop
Tag each product with the channels you sell on. The same print shows its real take-home on Etsy versus your own site, fees baked in, not bolted on.
Know your craft.
The cost engine is free. Put your real numbers in and see what to charge.