Cost calculation (filament, time, energy consumption)

Bambu Lab Software Feature Requests
1

bambu-studio-feature

Hello!
I would like to see additional settings that can be included in the cost calculation.
The filament itself is only a small part of the external costs you have to calculate for the sale.
Would be very nice if you could additionally set “price/time” and if possible “price/kwh” (maybe, since there is no energy consumption measurement, a third setting “average kwh/hour”).

At the moment I do it with an Excel spreadsheet in which I insert the “price/kg” from the slicer and additionally “price/time”, “price/kwh” and my measurements for the average energy consumption per hour (pla / petg).

Off (looking forward to edit and add keywords… thought it was “>”) :see_no_evil:

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2

I don’t think the printers have any current measurement capability. If that’s correct then it would all just be estimates based on off and on times of heaters, motor steps, etc. It would be a fair mess to keep track of everything.

There are power monitors that are designed for this stuff though. Kill A Watt makes a line of power monitors and there’s a bunch of others that do the same things. Just tell the meter how much your electricity costs and it does the rest.

Might get the power monitoring features you want faster (and more accurately) just buying a power monitor.

3

I have power monitors on almost all of my switches, partly because I use my voice to turn everything on and off, great for disabled people.

It provides reasonable values which could be entered into the slicer and calculated along with the filament usage value throughout the print.

Each of my printers can be switched on and off by voice, it makes my world much easier to control.

For those who are costing out jobs, having a way to calculate this, even with an ish factor, is a simple and easy add.

4

I also have some tools for measuring power consumption.
I think the option for an average power consumption per hour would be the first step to see the approximate cost of a print much faster.

I don’t need to check the power consumption after the print :slight_smile: I need to be able to calculate it to make a prediction.
It is possible to calculate this manually, just for an average value, simple arithmetic (kwh per money). It would be a nice option to see this also in the prediction of the filament used.
With the different filament types set you would also be able to distinguish the different energy consumption depending on the temperature. And then, especially with increased print volumes, you could possibly decide on a different filament.
Maintaining these values manually would not be a problem either. Simply run the fans, the heating bed and the nozzle individually for 15 minutes and determine the energy consumption. You can then determine the costs, at least approximately, depending on the temperature and the percentage of fan use.

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5

Orca has the option to add an additional price per time.

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6

I usually use OrcaSlicer and tried to slice the new version of Bambu Studio. But I found that there is no possibility of entering the time price as in OrcaSlicer. So, unfortunately, I have to go back to Orca.
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