Post-Processing Cost Estimator

Post-processing is often the hidden cost center in additive manufacturing — the print itself finishes, but the part isn't done. This calculator separates post-processing into three tracks that behave very differently at scale. Manual labor (support removal plus sanding/finishing) scales linearly: every part needs the same hands-on minutes, so total manual hours is just per-part time multiplied by part count, billed at your full labor rate. Heat treatment, by contrast, runs in oven batches of 20 parts at a fixed 3-hour cycle regardless of how many parts are in that batch, so it's charged at only 20% of labor rate since the process is mostly unattended — meaning 21 parts costs almost as much oven time as 40 parts, a batching effect worth knowing before you print in small runs.

Surface treatment (vapor smoothing, coating, plating) batches at 10 parts per cycle with a 30-minute setup per batch on top of roughly 10 minutes of processing per part, billed at 50% of labor rate to reflect a mix of attended and unattended work. The model assumes toggles for heat and surface treatment are simple yes/no choices rather than variable-intensity processes, and it doesn't account for reject rates or rework — if your process regularly requires redoing supports removal on failed parts, add a buffer to your inputs. Because heat and surface treatment costs jump in batch-sized steps rather than smoothly, small changes in part count near a batch boundary (like going from 20 to 21 parts) can cause a disproportionate cost increase.