Printers: hourly cost, power draw and maintenance

Under Printers you load each machine with New Printer. The form asks for Name, Model, Nozzle (mm) and Consumption (Watts).

As you type the Model you can pick one from the catalog (Search catalog): it fills in the nozzle and the model's typical power draw, and you can adjust them. Below are Preventive Maintenance (the Maintenance Interval (Hours)) and Financial Health (ROI), with the Purchase Price ($) and the Purchase Date. At the end, the Machine use cost ($/h).

The Purchase Date is informational. The Purchase Price is used for investment recovery and to estimate the hourly cost.

When you quote with a printer, BenchyOps adds two things for its printing hours:

• Electricity: the power draw in watts divided by 1000, times the printing hours and your electricity rate (the Electricity rate from Settings).
• Machine use: the machine cost per hour times the printing hours. That cost is maintenance and depreciation; electricity is not inside it, so it is not charged twice.

The filament material is charged separately. See How the price is calculated.

You can type it by hand or let BenchyOps estimate it from the Purchase Price. The estimate uses the machine type (from the catalog) and spreads the purchase price over an estimated service life:

• Depreciation: the purchase price divided by the lifetime hours.
• Maintenance: the purchase price times its maintenance factor, divided by the lifetime hours.

The lifetime hours and the maintenance factor depend on the type. For example, an entry-level machine is estimated at 2,500 hours and 30% of its price in parts; a premium one, 6,000 hours and 15%; a mainstream one, 4,000 hours and 20%.

The Estimated cost per hour block shows Electricity, Maintenance (estimated) and Depreciation (estimated). Use estimate loads the total (maintenance + depreciation) into the field. If you do not enter the Purchase Price, maintenance and depreciation stay at 0 and you only see the reference electricity.

BenchyOps adds hours to the printer as pieces are printed and jobs are completed. Those hours feed the Lifetime total and the maintenance cycle.

Every printer has a Maintenance Interval (Hours) (300 by default). On the card you see Maintenance, its cycle Cycle: X of Y h and the status:

When you do the maintenance, tap Log maintenance: the cycle goes back to 0 and the date is saved. That is the wear the hourly cost is meant to cover: what the machine consumes and loses in value with use.

The card shows Operational or Printing (when it has a piece from a production plan in progress). If the machine had print failures in the last 90 days, the number of recent failures is shown.

That history is used when quoting: if you pick a printer with recent failures, a long job, overdue service or several materials, BenchyOps suggests a risk margin. See How the price is calculated.

If you loaded the Purchase Price, the card shows the Investment recovery: what was Billed on completed jobs against what you paid for the machine.

When the billed amount already covers the purchase, it shows Paid off; if not, you see the percentage and how much is Remaining.

Duplicate printer creates a copy with the same data and cost, but without the original's history or maintenance cycle (it is another physical machine).

Delete printer sends it to the Trash: it can no longer be picked for new quotes and its history is kept. If it is assigned to an active quote, it cannot be deleted.

From the Printer Trash you can Restore it or Delete Permanently. Restoring may require space in your plan.

A printer can also be paused from Printers: it stops being used for quoting and planning, but keeps its history. Activating it again needs room in your plan. If you have more active than the plan allows (for example, when the trial ends), the first ones you added are used: pause the ones you do not use to choose which stay, and moving up a plan brings them all back on their own. Pausing and activating can be done by owner, admin and employee. See Plans, free trial and payments.