Hourly Cost Setting Is Ignored in Print Cost Calculation
Hello Creality Print Team and users,
I would like to report what appears to be a bug or an unfinished feature in Creality Print.
I currently own two Creality printers, a Creality Hi and a Creality K2 Plus, and I use Creality Print as my primary slicer for both machines.
In the printer settings, there is an option to define an hourly machine cost. This feature is extremely useful for users who sell 3D prints because it helps calculate the true production cost of a part.
However, after slicing a model, the total print cost only includes the filament cost. The hourly machine cost is completely ignored, regardless of the value entered in the printer settings.
For example:
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Filament cost: calculated correctly.
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Print time: displayed correctly.
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Hourly machine cost: configured in printer settings.
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Total print cost: only reflects filament usage.
As a result, the estimated print cost is inaccurate and cannot be used to properly calculate selling prices or evaluate the real cost of production.
I have already contacted support regarding this issue, but I have not received a solution or clarification. Since the option exists in the software, I would expect it to have an effect on the final cost calculation.
Could the development team please verify whether this is a bug or if the feature has not yet been implemented? Many users, especially those running small businesses or selling printed parts, would greatly benefit from having the hourly machine cost included in the final print cost estimate.
I appreciate all the work being done on Creality Print and hope this issue can be reviewed in a future update.
Thank you for your time and attention.
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The straightforward answer is this: the hourly machine cost setting appears to exist in the interface, but Creality Print does not appear to apply it to the final cost calculation.
That is either a bug, an unfinished feature, or a setting that was added to the UI without being properly connected to the cost model.
That is on Creality to fix.
This is not only a Creality problem in the broad sense. Cost and time estimates are imperfect across slicers. Creality Print is derived from OrcaSlicer, which is derived from Bambu Studio and the Prusa/Slic3r lineage. But once Creality ships it under its own name, with its own printer profiles and its own UI settings, Creality owns the validation.
I use Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, and Creality Print. None of them should be treated as calibrated cost-accounting tools out of the box. But Creality Print is especially weak here. The estimates for 0.2, 0.6, and 0.8 mm nozzle profiles are often nowhere near reality. I have had models using the 0.8 mm profile estimate roughly five hours and then finish in under two. If it can’t get the estimated times correctly, then the cost estimates will also be off since the two are related.
That points to a larger issue: the profiles and calculation logic do not appear to be seriously validated against actual machine behavior. When changing speeds for specific functions, such as outer wall or inner wall speed, I have not seen a consistently logical relationship between those settings and the resulting time estimate.
The machine-cost issue is even more basic. If the software provides an hourly machine cost field, then that value should be included in the final print cost. If it is ignored, the feature is effectively broken.
This has been an ongoing problem for years. Unless it starts affecting printer sales, or someone in the open-source community fixes the underlying logic and Creality pulls that work back into its fork, I would not expect this to get much developer attention.
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