Machine payback calculator, cost per machine hour and break-even, never blended into one number
Enter the machine price, its fixed running costs and your electricity rate, then the revenue each hour or part leaves after material. Read the full cost per machine hour, the monthly net cash flow, the simple and discounted break-even point, and a built-in 20% fewer orders scenario the tool always runs, whether your own numbers look healthy or not.
Open the payback calculator A free account opens this tool. The interface is in English and nothing you enter leaves your browser.How it works
Three steps from a machine price to a checked payback, with a permanent worst-case example alongside your own.
Enter the machine price and its fixed running costs
Enter the machine price plus shipping and customs, then maintenance per month, floor space per month, consumables and spares per year, and the depreciation period in years. Maintenance, floor space and consumables are treated as fixed: they do not fall just because the machine ran fewer hours this month, unlike depreciation itself, which is an accounting entry for money already spent once at purchase, not a monthly cash cost.
Set the electricity draw and your real working hours per month
Enter the electricity consumption per machine hour in kWh, your own price per kWh from the invoice, and how many hours the machine actually runs in a typical month. Electricity is the one cost here that is genuinely proportional to hours worked, which is why it is the only cost that falls when the machine runs less, and why the tool always shows what happens if monthly hours drop by 20%.
Choose revenue per hour or per part, and read the payback
Switch between revenue per machine hour and revenue per part, enter the average machine time per part if you chose the second, and the defect rate, since a failed print consumes hours and electricity without producing revenue. The result shows the full cost per machine hour, the net cash flow per month, the simple and discounted break-even point, how many units that break-even takes, and the minimum monthly volume just to stop losing money, with an optional discount rate and analysis horizon under Advanced.
Six numbers from one machine
Enter the machine and its running costs once, then read every number a purchase decision actually needs.
Built to keep cash apart from accounting
Most payback mistakes are not arithmetic. They come from folding depreciation into a cash question, a full sale price into a margin question, or a fixed cost into a variable one.
Two numbers that answer different questions
The full cost per machine hour includes depreciation, because pricing has to recognise that the machine will eventually need replacing. Net cash flow per month excludes it, because the purchase price already left the bank account once, at the point of sale, not again every month. A 2,000 EUR FDM printer with 3,200 EUR a year in fixed costs and about 520 EUR a year in electricity at 240 hours a month works out to roughly 1.43 EUR per machine hour once depreciation is added in, against about 1.29 EUR without it. Mixing the two leads you to believe a machine is profitable when the cost of eventually replacing it is not actually covered anywhere.
Fixed costs held apart from the one real variable cost
Maintenance, floor space and consumables are billed roughly the same whether the machine runs forty hours a month or a hundred and forty; only electricity moves in proportion to hours worked. In a worked scenario, orders falling 20% cuts margin by exactly 20%, but rent and maintenance do not move at all, so monthly profit can fall by over 40%, nearly double the drop in orders. That gap is operating leverage, and it is why the tool always runs a fixed 20% fewer orders comparison rather than leaving it as something you would only check when things already look wrong.
Simple and discounted break-even, never the same speed
Simple payback counts months until cumulative cash flow crosses zero, treating a euro received next month the same as a euro received in five years, which is not economically accurate. Discounted payback applies a cost-of-capital rate, editable and defaulting to 10% a year, roughly what a small Bulgarian business would pay on an investment loan or earn on an alternative use of the same money. Discounted payback is always equal to or slower than simple payback, never faster, and the tool treats that inequality as a correctness check on its own arithmetic.
A failure example, shown even when your own numbers look fine
Alongside whatever you enter, the tool always displays a second, fixed scenario where the same machine and running costs earn only 1 EUR of margin per part instead of 5, so the visitor sees what a machine that never pays back actually looks like, not only when their own figures happen to be bad. The calculator distinguishes two separate failure modes: a net cash flow at or below zero, which never crosses the investment line however long you wait, and the sharper case where the electricity cost of a single attempt already exceeds its expected revenue after defects, so no volume at all can cover even the fixed costs.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between cost per machine hour and net cash flow per month?
Cost per machine hour is the full cost of running the machine, including depreciation, and it is the number to use for pricing, because it recognises that the machine will eventually wear out and need replacing. Net cash flow per month only counts money that actually moves: revenue minus maintenance, floor space, consumables and electricity, with no depreciation, because the machine's purchase price already left the account once, at the moment of purchase. Treating the two as one figure is the classic mistake: it makes a machine look profitable while the eventual cost of replacing it is not being covered by anything.
Why does a 20% drop in orders cut profit by more than 20%?
In a worked example, a machine running 200 hours a month earns a margin of 600 EUR against 343 EUR of costs, for 257 EUR profit. If orders fall 20% and hours drop to 160, the margin falls 20% too, to 480 EUR, but maintenance and floor space do not fall at all, and only electricity drops in proportion to the fewer hours worked, so costs only fall to about 334 EUR. Profit lands at roughly 146 EUR, a drop of about 43%, more than double the 20% fall in orders. This is operating leverage, and it is exactly why the tool always computes a fixed 20% fewer orders scenario rather than leaving it optional.
What is the break-even point, and is clearing it enough to know a machine was a good purchase?
The break-even point uses the standard managerial-accounting formula: fixed costs divided by the margin each hour or part contributes, which gives the monthly volume at which revenue exactly covers the month's running costs and profit is zero. It answers one specific question, whether the current monthly activity supports itself, without touching the machine's original purchase price at all. An owner can clear this point every month and still never fully repay the machine, if the margin is too thin relative to what it cost, so break-even is necessary but not sufficient on its own.
Why is the discounted break-even point slower than the simple one?
Simple payback just counts months until the running total of net cash flow reaches zero, which treats a euro received next month exactly the same as a euro received in five years. That is not economically accurate, because money available today can earn interest, be reinvested in another machine, or simply hold its value better than money that arrives later. Discounted payback applies a cost-of-capital rate to every future month before summing them, and because discounting always reduces the value of a future payment, the discounted break-even point can only be equal to or later than the simple one, never earlier.
Does the revenue figure I enter include the cost of material?
No. The tool asks for revenue minus material on purpose: the margin left over to cover the machine, not the full price charged for the part. Entering the full sale price without subtracting material overstates the picture, because material is a genuinely variable cost tied directly to each part produced. The calculator answers one question, whether the investment in the machine itself comes back, not what a single print costs from end to end; a full per-print cost, material plus electricity plus machine, is a separate question handled by a different EduFacturing tool.
When does the calculator say a machine never pays back?
Two distinct failure modes. First, if net monthly cash flow is zero or negative, the cumulative curve never crosses zero no matter how long the horizon runs, and the tool states this directly instead of hiding behind an average payback figure that the data cannot support. Second, and sharper: if the electricity cost of a single attempt already exceeds the expected revenue from it once defects are accounted for, no production volume at all can cover even the fixed monthly costs, and every additional unit adds loss rather than profit. In that case the fix is to raise the margin or fix the defect rate before payback is even a meaningful question.
Does the calculator apply Bulgarian tax depreciation rules?
It checks against them. Under the Corporate Income Tax Act, Article 55, paragraph 1, point 2, machinery, production equipment and apparatus fall into category II, with a maximum annual tax depreciation rate of 30%, which sets a minimum tax-recognised period of about 3.33 years, roughly three years and four months, for full depreciation. That is a speed ceiling, not an obligation: the accounting period used for internal management purposes can run longer, but the tax authority will not recognise depreciation faster than that ceiling. If the depreciation period entered is shorter than the statutory minimum, the tool flags it directly rather than silently accepting a number the tax office would reject.
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