Work out what to charge per hour for CNC machine time from your own costs: machine, space, labor, overhead, and how many hours you actually bill. The numbers below are example inputs, not industry averages. Replace them with yours.
| Cost | Per year | Per billable hr |
|---|---|---|
| Machine depreciation | $7,650.00 | $5.46 |
| Floor space | $1,800.00 | $1.29 |
| Maintenance | $3,000.00 | $2.14 |
| Tooling & consumables | $6,000.00 | $4.29 |
| CAM / software | $2,500.00 | $1.79 |
| Power | $3,150.00 | $2.25 |
| Operator (burdened) | $72,800.00 | $52.00 |
| Shop overhead share | $10,000.00 | $7.14 |
| Break-even cost | $76.36 | |
| Shop rate with margin | $91.63 |
1,400 billable hours per year.
The rate is only as good as the utilization you plug in. If you're unsure, compare the hours you invoiced last year against the hours the machine was scheduled.
Add up everything the machine costs you in a year (depreciation, floor space, maintenance, tooling, software, power, the operator's burdened wages, and its share of shop overhead), divide by the hours you can actually bill, then add your profit margin. The divisor is the part most shops get wrong: billable hours are scheduled hours times utilization, not every hour the doors are open.
Most machine costs are fixed: you pay for the machine, the space, and the operator whether the spindle is cutting or not. Spreading those costs over fewer billable hours raises the rate you need to break even, which is why the same machine can need a very different rate in a shop running one shift at 50% utilization than in one running two shifts at 80%.
Many shops quote a single loaded rate that includes the operator, and this calculator does too. If one operator runs several machines, their cost is split across them, which is what the machines-per-operator input does. Shops that quote labor separately can set the wage to zero here and add labor as its own line.
Next: how to quote CNC jobs once you know your rate, or how a machining cost estimate breaks down.