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What does eliminating tooling actually save you?
Vendors in this category quote savings percentages without giving you any way to check them against your own operation. Put your numbers in. The assumptions are listed below the result, so you can argue with them.
Your numbers
What that means
- Tooling eliminated
- 40 dies × $1,800
- $72,000
- Changeover time recovered
- 288 hrs/yr at $85/hr
- $24,480
- Scrap reduction
- 40% of $144,000 scrap cost
- $57,600
What this model assumes
- Changeover savings are credited at 80%, not 100% — material still has to be threaded and the first article checked.
- Scrap reduction is your estimate, not ours. Your structure and SKU mix decide the real number; enter what your own records support.
- Excludes laser consumables, service contract, power, and extraction — material, and worth adding once a configuration is defined.
- Excludes revenue from work you cannot currently take on. In practice this is often the largest term and the hardest to estimate.
In plain terms
What is the ROI of laser converting?
The return comes from three places that a converter can put a number on: tooling that is never bought, sharpened, stored, or scrapped; changeovers that happen in software instead of on the die cabinet, which turns short runs from a loss into a margin; and scrap and rework avoided because feature geometry does not drift with tool wear. Against those sits the capital cost of the machine and its service plan. Whether the payback is one year or four depends on SKU count, changeover frequency, and run length — which is why the calculator above asks for yours rather than quoting an average.
What does the calculator leave out?
Anything it cannot measure from your inputs: the revenue from features a die cannot make at all (registered easy-open, selective-layer perforation, variable data), the cost of the trial and qualification period, and — most importantly — whether the laser produces an acceptable edge on your specific material at the speed you need. The lab answers the last one before any of the arithmetic matters.
A model is not a business case
This calculator handles the three costs that are easy to quantify. It cannot tell you whether the laser produces an acceptable edge on your specific material at the speed you need — and that, not the arithmetic, is what actually decides the purchase. The lab answers that part.