Cost a print in pesos — filament at local prices, electricity at your own kWh rate, plus the humidity and power-supply costs that matter here.
| Material cost | — |
| Electricity cost | — |
| Machine wear | — |
| Your time | — |
| Failure allowance | — |
| True cost per part | — |
| Suggested selling price | — |
The arithmetic is identical everywhere. What changes in the Philippines is which line items actually bite. Two of them are much larger than printers in temperate countries usually expect: humidity and power reliability.
Ambient humidity in much of the country sits high for most of the year. PLA tolerates it reasonably well, but PETG, nylon and especially PVA absorb moisture quickly, and wet filament does not just print badly — it prints, fails, and the grams are gone either way. A shop that budgets an 8% failure rate in a dry climate often needs 12% or more here unless filament is stored properly.
The fix is cheap relative to the waste: seal open spools in a container with desiccant, and dry filament before long jobs. The failure-rate field above is set higher than our other calculators for exactly this reason. If you dry and store properly, lower it — but do not lower it before you have actually solved the storage problem.
Electricity rates vary by distributor and by monthly consumption tier, so the only figure to trust is the one on your own bill. Enter it in pesos per kilowatt-hour above.
Separately, an interrupted print is a total loss of the material and time already spent. If supply in your area is unreliable, a UPS that can carry the printer for a few minutes — or simply avoiding starting a fourteen-hour job during known outage windows — is worth more than any filament discount you can negotiate.
material = (grams ÷ 1000) × ₱ per kg electricity = (watts ÷ 1000) × hours × ₱ per kWh true cost = material + power + wear + labour + failure allowance price = true cost × (1 + margin ÷ 100)
A 120 g PLA part on a 150 W printer running six hours: material ₱132, electricity about ₱10.80, wear ₱90, your time ₱150, and a 12% failure allowance of roughly ₱28. True cost comes to about ₱411, and at a 60% margin that part should sell for around ₱658.
Quoting ₱132 because that is the filament cost would lose about ₱280 on every single unit. This is the most common way small print businesses quietly operate at a loss.
| Material | Typical local price | Storage note |
|---|---|---|
| PLA | ₱900 – ₱1,400 / kg | Fairly forgiving; still seal it. |
| PETG | ₱1,100 – ₱1,600 / kg | Absorbs moisture — dry before long jobs. |
| ABS | ₱1,000 – ₱1,500 / kg | Warping raises the failure rate. |
| TPU | ₱1,800 – ₱2,500 / kg | Slow printing raises cost per part. |
| Nylon | ₱2,200 – ₱3,200 / kg | The worst for humidity — dry it without exception. |
| Resin | ₱2,300 – ₱3,500 / L | Plus gloves, alcohol and curing. See the resin calculator. |
Multiply the printer's draw in kilowatts by your rate in pesos per kilowatt-hour. At ₱12/kWh, a 150 W printer costs about ₱1.80 per hour. A six-hour print costs roughly ₱10.80 in electricity. Use your own bill's rate, as it varies by distributor and consumption tier.
Because humidity-driven filament degradation and power interruptions both destroy prints that would otherwise succeed. Twelve percent is a starting point for unsealed storage in a humid area; reduce it once you have dry storage and a stable power setup, and not before.
Sometimes. Imported brands are usually more consistent in diameter and moisture content, which lowers the failure rate. Compare on cost per usable gram — including the prints you throw away — rather than on the sticker price alone.
For made-to-order parts, 50% to 100% on true cost is normal. Below roughly 30% one failed print or one refused delivery wipes out the profit on several good ones.