Estimate what a 3D print costs while you design it: filament length, grams and price from your part’s volume, infill and spool price. Free, in your browser.
Mostly the filament: the grams of plastic the part uses, times what your spool cost per kilogram. A 20 mm cube in PLA at 15% infill uses about 4.5 g, roughly $0.09 from a $20 spool. OwlCAD estimates it while you design: the 3D Print panel turns your part’s volume into filament length, printed mass and cost, so you can compare sizes, infills and materials before you slice.
Six inputs, each one you can see and change in the 3D Print panel.
Measured from your solid by the geometry kernel when the print check runs, so they are exact. Everything after this is the estimate.
The shell is the walls and the solid top and bottom layers together, 1.2 mm by default (about three perimeters at 0.4 mm). Infill, 15% by default, fills what is left.
Grams come from volume × density. The built-in figures, in g/cm³: PLA 1.24, PETG 1.27, ABS 1.04, ASA 1.07, TPU 1.21, Nylon (PA) 1.14, PC 1.20. Wood, carbon-fibre and silk blends differ, so choose Custom and enter the density from the spool’s data sheet.
Starting points for a 1 kg spool: PLA $20, PETG $22, ABS $22, ASA $27, TPU $30, Nylon (PA) $45, PC $40. Enter what you actually paid, in any currency, and the cost comes back in the same one.
8,000 mm³ of solid with 2,400 mm² of surface. The 1.2 mm shell takes 2,880 mm³, and 15% infill adds 768 mm³ of the rest: 3,648 mm³ of PLA, about 1.52 m of 1.75 mm filament, 4.5 g, and $0.09 at $20 a kilogram.
Supports, brims, rafts, colour-change purge, electricity, printer wear and failed prints. Your slicer counts the plastic exactly once the part is sliced.
Model it, run the print check, and the 3D Print panel prices it in grams and in your currency. Free, in your browser.
Open the 3D Print panel and run the print check. Under Material & cost, pick the filament and its diameter, set the infill and shell, and enter what you paid per kilogram, in any currency. The panel shows filament volume and length, the printed and solid mass, and the estimated cost, and updates as you change any of them.
Close enough to compare designs, not a substitute for your slicer. It is worked out from the solid’s volume and surface area rather than a sliced toolpath: the shell is surface area × shell thickness, and the infill fills what is left. Boxy parts read slightly heavy, because two walls meeting at a corner are counted twice. Your slicer’s figure is the exact one.
Everything that is not the part itself: supports, brims, rafts and purge from colour changes, plus electricity, printer wear, your time and failed prints. On a small part, supports and a brim can add more plastic than the infill does.
On small parts, hardly: the walls are most of the plastic. A 20 mm cube is about four-fifths shell at 15% infill, so doubling the infill to 30% adds only about 21%. On large parts infill dominates: a 100 mm cube uses about 262 g at 15% and about 66% more at 30%. The 3D Print panel shows the change as you type.
Slicers such as PrusaSlicer, Bambu Studio, Cura and OrcaSlicer report filament use and cost after slicing, and theirs is the exact figure. OwlCAD gives you an estimate earlier, in the modelling tool itself, so the cost of a design choice shows while you can still change it.