Buying a machine or buying a service: the honest comparison

We manufacture machines. So first things first: this is written by someone who makes money if you buy one. That's precisely why the comparison needs to be honest—because a machine sold to someone who didn't need it comes back in the form of a dissatisfied customer, and that costs more than the sale itself.

The question isn't which of the two options is better. It's how many hours a year that machine will work.

The two options, in a table

The cost of owning a machine that is not included in the machine's budget

This is the most underestimated part. The machine is the largest expense, but it's not the only one, and the real CAPEX of getting into additive breaks them all down. In short, you need to have:

• Powder management: screening, storage, and transfer under appropriate conditions—hence GARBI exists.
• Safety: certified powder extraction, protective equipment, and, depending on the alloy, ATEX requirements.
• The stress-relieving furnace, which is mandatory.
• Someone to operate it. This is the real deal. You don't need a PhD, but you do need a trained and available person; a machine without an operator is a machine that's idle.
• The learning curve. The first few weeks don't produce good parts, they produce knowledge.
• The space, with its electrical and gas installations.

The calculation that decides

There is no universal number, but there is a method, and it is done with data you already have.

Step 1. How many parts per year? Count the ones you already order from outside, plus the ones you don't order because they were too expensive or too slow. Those latter ones are the ones almost no one counts, and they're usually the deciding factor.

Step 2. How many machine hours is it? Approximately: part height divided by layer thickness, multiplied by layer time. Or easier: ask the person who manufactures them for you today.

Step 3. Compare to the annual cost of owning the machine. Depreciation plus operator plus consumables plus maintenance, divided by the hours you will use it. That gives you your actual hourly cost.

Step 4. Multiply by the hours from step 2 and compare it to what you pay outside.

The conclusion is usually one of these three:

• Well below the break-even point → service, without hesitation. An underutilized machine is the worst possible investment: the cost per unit skyrockets because the amortization is spread across very few.
• Near the break-even point → decide on something other than money: confidentiality, deadlines, or iteration speed.
• Well above the break-even point → machine, and you're probably already late.

The four reasons to buy that are not the cost per part

In practice, almost no one buys their first machine for a pittance. They buy one of these:

Iterate quickly. If your business is product development, the difference between testing one version per month and three per week isn't measured in euros per unit. That's why technology centers are our natural clients.

Nothing should leave the house. Defense, medical, or simply a geometry that is your competitive advantage.

Qualify your own materials. If your value lies in a specific alloy or powder you want to develop, you need a machine with open parameterization. With an external service, you're dependent on their catalog.

Sell the service yourself. If you're going to manufacture for others, the machine isn't an expense, it's the product.

The three reasons not to buy yet

You don't have anyone to operate it. This is the number one cause of machine downtime. People are more important than machines.

You don't yet know what parts you're going to make. Buying to "see what we can come up with" ends up with an expensive machine making demonstration parts. First, order ten real parts from an external source, and with that, you'll have the numbers from the calculation above and know if the process works for you.

Your volume is seasonal. Three months at full capacity and nine months off is a pattern that external services absorb much better.

The Middle Way

Don't choose all at once. The sequence that works best is this:

1. Outsource the first actual parts. This validates that the technology solves your problem, and it's inexpensive.
2. Bring a part to an open house and watch it being manufactured. This lets you understand what you're getting into, and it's free—that is what the open days are for.
3. If the numbers work out, buy. If they don't, keep outsourcing: it's a perfectly sensible decision and not a temporary one.

And for point one, AdditiveDelivery exists precisely for this reason: to manufacture the part without buying the machine, with the same software, the same parameters and the same result as if you had it.

When we say no

To wrap things up where we started. If your parts are large, if they're solid and simple, if you're going to make ten thousand a year, or if you don't have anyone who can dedicate time to the machine, our recommendation is that you don't buy it — and we prefer to say this in the first conversation rather than the third.

If you're looking to try it out without committing, the quote calculator gives you an estimate of the cost of your parts in a minute, and from there you can start talking about numbers instead of impressions.

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The complete breakdown of the entry costs is in Real CAPEX of Additive Manufacturing. The twelve questions to ask yourself if you decide to buy a machine are in How to Choose a Metal 3D Printer. And how to order a part correctly if you decide not to buy it is in How to Order a Printed Part.

And if part of the doubt is not wanting to send files outside, we deal with that separately in send your part to a stranger.