How to charge for material in a sheet-metal quote

Weight from the drawing

Densities are from Engineering ToolBox. A 3000 × 1500 mm sheet of 3 mm steel is 4.5 m² × 3 mm × 7.85 kg = 106 kg; Aston Precision lists that sheet in hot-rolled mild steel at AUD 211.95 before GST, which is AUD 2.00 a kg (computed). In inches the arithmetic is the same: a 48 × 96 in sheet is 48 × 96 ÷ 144 = 32 sq ft, as a PlasmaSpider reply told a shop pricing a job of three such sheets (2021). Keep a date with every price: Eurometal reported north-west European mills' hot-rolled coil at about €750 a tonne in October 2026, against just over €600 a year earlier — a coil price at the mill, not what a stockholder charges for sheet. Zorocut warns when your material price is more than 30 days old.

Three ways to bill the area

An example: ten L-shaped brackets in 3 mm hot-rolled steel, each fitting a 300 × 200 mm rectangle with 350 cm² of metal in it (example), at Aston's price for a 2400 × 1200 mm sheet, AUD 132.00 — AUD 1.95 a kg (computed). Material per part, before markup:

Zorocut bills any of the three. Bounding box adds the part spacing — by default the larger of 3 mm and the thickness, and at least 5 mm on thin plasma plate — to the part's width and height. The nested share divides the part's net area by the nest's utilisation, and counts a free strip of at least 100 mm that goes back on the rack as not used, so the customer does not pay for metal you keep; before you nest, it assumes 75 % (our estimate). Whole sheets bills every sheet the nest uses, a remnant at its own size. The default markup is 25 %. The online nester shows the sheets and the utilisation behind the number — see sheet utilisation.

Markup: what shops add

• +25–35 % on cost, and a 200 % markup on smaller jobs (Shane Warnick, PlasmaSpider, 2015).
• 1.5 or 2 × material cost, plus the per-inch price and pierces (djreiswig, PlasmaSpider, 2020); “I factor in my material 2 fold”, so that a spoiled cut is not at the shop's expense (TJS, PlasmaSpider, 2022).
• Cost plus at least 30 %, down from 50 % (rodw, LinuxCNC forum, 2018); cost plus 15–30 % from a shop that buys in volume (rikduk, PlasmaSpider, 2014).
• Lapas: 25–30 % is the standard fab-shop markup, 14–16 % on high-volume commodity sheet, 50–100 % on small batches that force a full sheet.
• Aston Precision bills whole sheets at cost, with no markup.