Application and capacity
Define material, geometry, thickness or capacity, production volume, quality, workflow, and future work.
Fiber laser operating cost
Fiber Laser Assist Gas Cost Calculator
Estimate assist-gas cost using your local gas price, flow, pressure, material mix and production schedule.
Use this calculator to estimate assist-gas cost from your local gas price, expected flow, and cutting time. It is a budgeting tool—not a machine capability chart or guaranteed operating cost.
Inputs that change real consumption
- Material, thickness, and assist-gas type
- Nozzle size, pressure, pierce settings, and duty cycle
- Purge time, leaks, delivery losses, and gas purity
- Actual cutting time versus total machine-on time
Validate the result with your gas supplier and a process test on the proposed machine. For a complete project estimate, request a quote.
Planning pathway
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Machine and facility
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Ownership and support
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Next step
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Fiber Laser Assist Gas Cost Calculator
Assist gas is usually the largest consumable line on a fiber laser, and it is almost never in the machine quote. Put your own gas price and your own beam-on hours in and see what it actually costs per hour, per week and per year.
Your cutting
Beam-on time, not shift hours. A machine in a one-shift shop is typically cutting for a fraction of the shift — use your controller’s cutting-hours counter if you have one.
Your gas prices — replace these defaults
The two defaults below are the price basis Piranha published its figures on, not a price we are quoting, and not a market price. They are here so you can reproduce Piranha’s numbers exactly. Replace them with the figures on your own gas invoice — contract pricing varies enormously by region, volume and delivery mode.
Piranha basis: $1.25
Piranha basis: $2.00
Compressed air has no gas purchase cost, but the compressor and dryer draw power and need service. Enter your own estimate in US dollars per hour if you have one. We do not supply a figure — it depends on your compressor, your duty cycle and your utility rate.
US shop power assumed. Work this out from your own utility rate in $/kWh against a compressor running on US 60 Hz service — 208 V, 240 V or 480 V. A compressor or dryer rated at 380 V / 50 Hz on an imported package will not draw what its datasheet says on a US grid, and in most cases will not run at all without a transformer. Confirm voltage, phase and frequency before you price the electricity.
If your controller or flow meter gives you a real number, put it here and it overrides the flow derived from Piranha’s published figures. Required for a meaningful result over 1/4 in, which Piranha does not publish.
Assist gas cost
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How this number was reached
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All three gases, your thickness and hours
| Gas | Per hour | Per year |
|---|
When a nitrogen generator starts to make sense
The derivation, in full
Piranha (MegaFab), a US machine tool manufacturer, publishes nitrogen assist gas cost per hour by thickness band, on a stated price basis of $1.25 per 100 ft³. Those figures are only useful to you if you happen to pay $1.25. So the calculator works backwards to the implied gas flow first, and then forward again at whatever you actually pay:
implied flow (ft³/hr) = published $/hr ÷ published $ per 100 ft³ × 100
- 20–18 ga: $8.30 ÷ $1.25 × 100 = 664 ft³/hr (18.8 m³/hr)
- 16–11 ga: $14.75 ÷ $1.25 × 100 = 1,180 ft³/hr (33.4 m³/hr)
- 10 ga – 1/4 in: $23.03 ÷ $1.25 × 100 = 1,842 ft³/hr (52.2 m³/hr)
Then the cost at your price:
$/hr = flow (ft³/hr) ÷ 100 × your $ per 100 ft³
The result reproduces Piranha exactly at $1.25 and scales linearly from there. Double the gas price and the hourly cost doubles — at $2.50 per 100 ft³, 16–11 ga nitrogen goes from $14.75/hr to $29.50/hr.
Oxygen is handled the same way from Piranha’s two published points, on a $2.00 per 100 ft³ basis. Piranha publishes a 40–500 ft³/hr range depending on nozzle: $0.80/hr on a 1.0 mm nozzle cutting carbon steel up to 1/4 in, and $10.00/hr on a 3.5 mm dual nozzle cutting 1/2 in carbon steel. Those work out to exactly 40 ft³/hr and 500 ft³/hr, which is why the range matches. Oxygen runs at roughly 15 psi against nitrogen’s roughly 200 psi — that pressure difference is the whole cost story.
Time: per week = $/hr × your beam-on hours. Per year = per week × 52. Per month = per year ÷ 12.
Fiber laser assist gas cost per hour — published figures
| Gas and thickness | Published $/hr | Price basis | Implied flow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nitrogen — 20–18 ga | $8.30 | $1.25 / 100 ft³ | 664 ft³/hr (18.8 m³/hr) |
| Nitrogen — 16–11 ga | $14.75 | $1.25 / 100 ft³ | 1,180 ft³/hr (33.4 m³/hr) |
| Nitrogen — 10 ga to 1/4 in | $23.03 | $1.25 / 100 ft³ | 1,842 ft³/hr (52.2 m³/hr) |
| Nitrogen — over 1/4 in | not published | — | not published |
| Oxygen — 1.0 mm nozzle, carbon steel to 1/4 in | $0.80 | $2.00 / 100 ft³ | 40 ft³/hr (1.1 m³/hr) |
| Oxygen — 3.5 mm dual nozzle, 1/2 in carbon steel | $10.00 | $2.00 / 100 ft³ | 500 ft³/hr (14.2 m³/hr) |
| Compressed air | approaches $0 | — | compressor-dependent |
Nitrogen runs at roughly 200 psi (13.8 bar) and oxygen at roughly 15 psi (1.0 bar). That is why nitrogen costs an order of magnitude more per hour than oxygen at similar gas prices, and why the material you cut — stainless and aluminum need nitrogen, carbon steel usually does not — drives your consumable cost far more than the machine does.
Compressed air: cheaper gas is not free
Compressed air brings the gas purchase cost close to zero, which is why it is the first thing a buyer asks about. What it does not do is come for free.
Regular shop air will not work. Piranha states this plainly. Laser assist air needs its own dedicated compressor, dryer and multi-stage filtration — moisture or oil carried to the cutting head will wreck the lens and ruin the edge. Arcus CNC publishes the specification the air has to hit: dew point below −40 °F (−40 °C) and 145–232 psi (10–16 bar) at the cutting head. Arcus publishes both figures in metric; the imperial figures here are UmproTech conversions.
The published capital costs conflict sharply — both are shown
- Piranha (MegaFab): $40,000 to $80,000 for the compressor, dryer and filter system.
- Arcus CNC: $5,000 to $20,000 for an oil-free compressor with dryer and filtration.
That is not a small disagreement — it is roughly an order of magnitude at the low end. The likely explanation is scale and duty: a package sized for a high-power machine running continuously is a different animal from one sized for a smaller machine running intermittently. We publish both rather than pick the one that suits the argument. Get a quote sized against your machine’s published air consumption and duty cycle before assuming either figure applies to you.
And you give up speed and edge quality
Arcus publishes that compressed air runs at 70–85 % of oxygen-assist cutting speed on carbon steel. Air also leaves a grayish, slightly oxidized edge that generally needs cleanup before paint or powder coat.
Run that through your own numbers before deciding: a 15–30 % speed loss on a machine that is your bottleneck can cost more in throughput than the gas ever saved, and edge cleanup is labor you were not paying for before. Air is the right answer for plenty of shops — but it is a trade, not a free win.
Sources and attribution
- Nitrogen and oxygen cost per hour, pressures, nozzle flow range, compressed air filtration requirement, air system capital cost, nitrogen generator capital cost and the $100,000/yr justification threshold — Piranha (MegaFab), Fiber laser assist gas
- Compressed air speed penalty on carbon steel, dew point and pressure requirements at the head, and the alternative air system capital range — Arcus CNC, Assist gas selection guide
- Implied flow rates in ft³/hr are UmproTech’s derivation from Piranha’s published cost per hour and published price basis, shown in full on this page. They are not Piranha-published figures.
Results are estimates for planning. Actual gas consumption varies with nozzle, pressure, pierce count, nesting and machine condition, and gas pricing varies by region, contract and delivery mode — final consumable and support-equipment specification requires a quote review.