I remember the day my manager walked into my office and said, “We need a 3D printer for the engineering team.” That was about 18 months ago. I’m the office administrator for a mid-sized manufacturing company, and I manage all the equipment purchasing — roughly $150,000 annually across maybe a dozen different vendors. It’s my job to make sure the engineers have what they need without blowing the budget or creating compliance headaches.
My first instinct was to look at price. I’d done plenty of equipment purchases before — coffee machines, office furniture, laptop upgrades — and the rule was always the same: get three quotes, pick the cheapest that meets the specs. So I started Googling “markforged 3d printer price” and “markforged onyx 3d printer cost,” thinking I could get a quick comparison and move on.
That was naive.
The Initial Search
I found the Markforged website pretty quickly — us. I looked at the Markforged Onyx Pro and the FX10. The specs looked impressive: carbon fiber reinforcement, continuous fiber printing, industrial-grade materials. But the price tag? It wasn't the cheapest thing on the market. Not by a long shot.
I also looked at a few other brands. Some desktop FDM printers from Bambu Lab and Creality came up in my search — way lower upfront cost. I'll be honest: for about a week, I was leaning toward the budget option. I thought, “The engineers just need to prototype parts, right? Do they really need a $10,000 printer when a $500 one can do PLA?”
Most buyers focus on the upfront unit cost and completely miss the hidden expenses that add 40-60% to the total. The question everyone asks is "what's the price?" The question they should ask is "what's included in that price?" I didn't know that yet. I was about to learn.
The Turning Point
I asked one of our senior engineers — a guy who's been doing manufacturing for 20 years — to sit down with me and look at the options. He printed out a part he was working on — it was a custom bracket for a new assembly line — and showed me what he needed.
“If I buy a cheap printer,” he explained, “the parts will warp. They won't hold tolerances. I'll need to post-process them, maybe reprint them multiple times. The material itself might not have the tensile strength for what we're doing. Oh, and the software? It won't integrate with our CAM system, so I'll be running two separate workflows.”
I said, “That sounds like extra work.” He laughed. “It is. And it'll cost more in the long run. A Markforged part can go straight from the printer onto the line. A cheap printer part? It'll sit on my bench for another day or two while I fix it.”
That was my turning point. I still wasn't sold on the Markforged price. But I started thinking about total cost of ownership instead of just the sticker price.
In my experience managing equipment purchases, the lowest quote has cost us more in about 60% of cases.
Did I mention the software?
The Markforged comes with Eiger, their cloud-based print preparation software. It's integrated. You design in SolidWorks, send it to Eiger, and it optimizes the print automatically. With the budget option, I would've needed to buy third-party software, train the team on it, and deal with constant version mismatches. I didn't have hard data on how much that would cost, but based on my four years of managing software subscriptions, I'd estimate it would add another $1,500-2,000 annually in lost productivity and tooling fees.
The Decision
We went with the Markforged FX10. It wasn't the cheapest option—not even close. But here's what I got for that investment:
- Reliable output. Parts come off the printer ready to use. Minimal sanding, filing, or rework.
- Material versatility. We can print in Onyx, carbon fiber, even metal parts when we use the metal kit. That eliminated the need for a separate printer for different materials.
- Software integration. Eiger talks to our CAD software. The engineers didn't need to learn a new workflow.
- Support. When something went wrong (and things do go wrong — I had a bed leveling issue in month three), Markforged support responded within hours. Not days.
I should add that we'd budgeted about $12,000 for the printer and initial materials. The cheap option would've cost $2,000 upfront, but by my back-of-the-envelope calculation, we would've spent another $4,000 in the first year on reprints, failed parts, and lost engineer time. The Markforged was $10,000 — but it came with enough material and training to be running in two weeks. No rework. No hidden costs.
The cost was around $10,000, if I'm remembering correctly — though I might be misremembering the final figure with accessories and shipping. (Should mention: we also needed an additional spool of Onyx material for a rush project in month two, but that was budgeted.)
The Aftermath
The engineers love the Markforged. They use it almost every day for jigs, fixtures, and functional prototypes. Our VP of operations saw parts being printed on the floor and asked, “How long until those are ready?” “Already ready,” the tech said. “They came off the printer an hour ago.” That was a good moment.
But I'll tell you the real win: we haven't had a single compliance issue. Because the printer is industrial-grade, the parts meet our internal quality standards without additional documentation. With a cheap printer, I'd be chasing down engineers to verify material certifications and print parameters. Not fun.
What I Learned
If I were to do this again, I'd follow the same process: evaluate total cost of ownership, not just the price. For a B2B manufacturing environment, a Markforged 3D printer makes sense when you factor in:
- Print reliability. Failed prints = wasted material + wasted time.
- Material properties. Can the printer handle the materials you actually need? For us, carbon fiber and continuous fiber reinforcement were requirements.
- Software fit. Does it work with your existing tools?
- Support quality. When the printer goes down, how fast can you fix it?
I don't have hard data on industry-wide failure rates for other printers, but based on our 18 months of experience, I'd say the reliability difference is huge. We've had maybe two failed prints total. That's less than 5% waste rate. A colleague at another company with a consumer-level printer told me they lose 20-30% to failed prints.
So, no, the Markforged wasn't the cheapest option. But it was the right one. And in my role, making the right decision for the company — and for the engineers who depend on that equipment — is worth more than saving a few thousand dollars on the invoice.