How to price plasma cutting: per inch, per pierce, material and setup

What small plasma shops charge

These are forum posts from small US and Australian shops between 2009 and 2020: read them as the shape of a quote, not as today's prices. Some shops skip the pierce charge on thin plate — Shane Warnick only charges for pierces over 5/8 in (2014). One shop counted 581 inches of cut and 49 pierces on a 16-gauge stainless part and priced it at CAD 30 for cutting plus CAD 15 for toolpath, loading and unloading, with the material at cost plus 15–30 % (rikduk, 2014).

What a pierce costs you in consumables

A UK distributor sells Hypertherm's mechanised Powermax45 XP consumable kit (851511) at £216.80 before VAT: 7 nozzles and 7 electrodes (3 of them CopperPlus), plus 2 shields, a swirl ring, a cap and a deflector — about £31 per nozzle-and-electrode set (computed). A Langmuir forum user running 65 A on 11-gauge to 1/4 in mild steel gets 2,500 to 4,500 pierces per set and says pierces cause most of the wear: about £0.007–0.012 of consumables per pierce (computed). Hypertherm's own rule for the Powermax65/85 is 3–5 hours of arc-on time per set in mechanised cutting, less when you pierce instead of starting from the edge — £6–10 per arc-on hour (computed). So a $0.15 pierce charge covers the consumables many times over; the rest pays for the pierce delay, the head moves and your margin.

What an inch costs in arc time (Powermax45 XP, 45 A, air)

A worked example

• Ten brackets of 6 × 4 in with four Ø1/2 in holes, in 1/4 in mild steel (example). Cut length: 20 in of outline plus 4 × 1.57 in of holes = 26.3 in per part, and 5 pierces.
• Forum method: 26.3 in × $0.15 + 5 × $0.15 = $4.69 a part, $46.90 for ten. Material on the part's rectangle, 24 sq in at an assumed $0.05 per sq in (a figure from a 2010 post — use your own) × 1.5: $1.80 a part, $18 for ten.
• Time method: 26.3 in ÷ 48 in/min = 0.55 min of cutting, plus 5 × (0.6 s + 0.2 s, the controller lag a Langmuir user adds to each pierce) = 4 s. That is 0.62 min a part and 6.2 min for ten: $10.25 at $100 an hour.
• The gap — about $37 — is what the per-inch price pays for the rest of the job: loading the sheet, setting up the torch, unloading and cleanup. As one PlasmaSpider poster put it, “The material handling takes a lot longer than the cutting.” Time a real job before you trust either number.
• Add drawing time if the customer sends a sketch rather than a DXF, and check the total against your minimum order.