Stop Charging by Machine Time

One of the most common pieces of advice I see in maker groups is to price your products based on machine time. It gets repeated so often that most people accept it without ever questioning whether it still makes sense.

Personally, I don't think it does.

Let's say you and I both produce the exact same leather patch. Mine takes 15 minutes to engrave because I'm running an older machine. Yours takes one minute because you invested in faster equipment.

Does that mean your patch is only worth one-fifteenth of mine?

Of course not.

If anything, it means you made a smarter investment than I did. The customer receives the exact same finished product regardless of how long it sat under a laser. They aren't paying for machine runtime. They're paying for a patch that looks great, lasts, and solves whatever problem they bought it for.

That's a huge difference.

Technology Changes. Value Doesn't.

The biggest problem with pricing by machine time is that today's equipment isn't created equal.

Some shops are running entry-level hobby lasers while others have industrial CO₂ systems, galvo lasers, automation, autofocus, cameras, or multiple machines working at the same time. One shop might spend twenty minutes making a product that another shop can finish in two.

Nothing about the final product changed. The only thing that changed was the equipment used to make it.

So why should the selling price be completely different?

Customers Don't Buy Machine Time

I've never had a customer ask me how many minutes my laser will spend making their order.

They want to know if it looks good, if it's built to last, if it will arrive on time, and if the price is fair.

That's what customers care about.

Nobody is shopping for laser runtime. They're shopping for results.

Better Equipment Should Increase Your Profit

Think about almost any other industry.

If a carpenter buys better tools and can build cabinets twice as fast, nobody expects him to cut his prices in half.

If a restaurant installs a faster oven, customers don't expect their meals to suddenly cost less.

Businesses invest in equipment because it helps them produce more, improve quality, shorten lead times, and become more profitable. The goal isn't to lower the value of what they sell. It's to improve the return on the money they invested.

Our industry shouldn't be any different.

Where Machine-Time Pricing Falls Apart

The biggest flaw in this pricing model is that it actually rewards inefficiency.

The slower your machine is, the more you feel justified charging.

Read that again.

Two shops can produce nearly identical products, but the one with slower equipment somehow believes the product is worth more simply because their laser had to run longer.

That doesn't make much sense.

Your production speed doesn't determine the value of your product.

The market does.

Price the Product, Not the Process

A healthy pricing strategy should consider everything that goes into running your business.

• Materials

• Labor

• Packaging

• Shipping supplies

• Overhead

• Marketing

• Customer service

• Equipment replacement

• Profit

Machine time absolutely has value when you're calculating operating costs, scheduling production, or understanding shop efficiency.

It just shouldn't be the number that determines what your customer pays.

The Real Benefit of Faster Equipment

When you invest in better equipment, the reward isn't cheaper products.

The reward is higher capacity.

Maybe you go from making four patches an hour to sixty. Maybe your turnaround drops from two weeks to two days. Maybe you can finally accept larger wholesale orders without falling behind.

That's where the investment pays off.

Faster equipment should make your business more profitable, not convince you that your products are worth less.

Final Thoughts

I think pricing by machine time has become one of those ideas that's been repeated for so many years that people stopped asking whether it actually makes sense.

At the end of the day, a product isn't worth more because your machine is slower, and it isn't worth less because someone invested in better technology.

Customers aren't buying your production process.

They're buying the finished product.

Price the value you deliver, not the number of minutes your machine happened to be running.