Key Concepts
Understanding these fundamental concepts will help you make the most of Printago's features and capabilities.
Configure Once, Automate Forever
Printago asks more of you upfront than a simple "drag and drop G-code" workflow. You'll set up materials, assign slicer profiles, define SKUs with their variants, and configure your printers with the right tags and hardware details. That initial investment is deliberate—every piece of configuration you provide becomes a decision Printago never asks you to make again.
Once your materials are defined, the cloud slicer automatically picks the right filament profile. Once your process profiles are assigned, every future print uses the correct quality settings without manual selection. Once a SKU maps its variants to the right parts, colors, and parameters, every incoming order produces the correct jobs with zero intervention. The pattern holds across the entire platform: the more precisely you configure things once, the more completely Printago handles them from then on.
The goal isn't to eliminate complexity—it's to front-load it. A few hours of thoughtful setup replaces thousands of repetitive decisions over the life of your print farm.
Parts
A part is an uploaded 3D model file—STL, STEP, 3MF, OpenSCAD, or GCODE—along with its associated printing configuration such as material requirements, slicer process profiles, and build plate settings. Parts are the atomic unit of your print library: every print job in Printago originates from a part. Because Printago slices on demand, a single part file works across every compatible printer in your fleet without needing separate exports for each machine model.
SKUs (Assemblies)
A SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) is synonymous with an assembly—a complete, shippable product composed of one or more parts with specific quantities, material configurations, and customization options. While a part represents a single 3D model, a SKU represents the finished product a customer receives. SKUs also serve as the link between your production workflow and your e-commerce storefronts: when an order arrives from Shopify or Etsy, Printago matches the order's SKU identifier to your SKU definitions and automatically generates the correct print jobs. Hobbyist users work with Parts only, while Commercial users have access to both Parts and SKUs.
Orders
An order represents a customer request containing one or more SKUs with quantities, customer details, and a target fulfillment date. Orders bridge the gap between receiving a customer request and producing the physical parts—they translate "what the customer wants" into actionable print jobs in your queue. Orders can be created manually or automatically through e-commerce integrations, and they track production progress so you can see which requests are complete and which still have jobs in progress.
Print Queue & Gutenb3d
The print queue is Printago's central job management system, powered by an intelligent matching engine called Gutenb3d. Every print job enters the queue, where Gutenb3d automatically matches it to the best available printer based on material requirements, printer tags, and machine availability. Jobs are matched considering:
- Material type and color requirements
- Printer tags and groupings
- Printer availability (online, not busy, marked "Clear and Ready")
- Nozzle size and printer capabilities
If a job doesn't match any available printers, it remains in the queue while Printago continues processing other jobs. The system processes jobs from top to bottom, skipping over any that don't have matching printers at that moment.
Materials
Materials represent the filaments loaded in your printers and are the primary factor in how jobs get routed to the right machine. Each material has two layers: a base material (like "Bambu PLA Basic") defining the filament type, brand, and slicing profiles, and variants (like "Red" or "Matte Black") representing specific colors or finishes. The system supports matching at different levels of specificity—you can require an exact color variant, any color of a particular brand, or any filament of a given type. For Bambu Lab printers with RFID-tagged filament, material detection and assignment happen automatically.
Slicer Profiles
Slicer profiles are the collections of print settings—layer height, infill, speed, temperature, and more—that control how your 3D models are converted into G-code. Profiles fall into three categories: machine profiles (printer hardware settings), process profiles (quality settings like "0.20mm Standard"), and filament profiles (material-specific temperatures and flow rates). Printago syncs profiles from your Bambu Lab account or lets you import them from Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer, so the same profiles you've tuned locally become available fleet-wide.
Cloud Slicer (On-Demand Slicing)
The cloud slicer generates G-code on demand rather than requiring pre-sliced files for every printer and material combination. When a job is assigned to a printer, the slicer combines the machine profile from the printer, the filament profile from the matched material, and the process profile from the part (or the printer's default). Results are intelligently cached for instant repeat prints. This means a single uploaded part works on any compatible printer, and updating a profile once automatically affects all future prints that use it.
Currently, Printago doesn't automatically prevent jobs from being sent to printers with insufficient bed size. If a part is too large, the slicer will fail and the job will appear in the "Errored" tab. You can then retry the job on a larger printer.
Printer Management
Printer management is how you configure your physical printers to participate in automatic job matching. Each printer needs assigned materials, slicer profiles, and hardware settings (bed type, AMS configuration). Day-to-day operations center on marking printers as "clear and ready" after removing a completed print, swapping materials, and monitoring status. Printers can be organized with tags to group them by location, purpose, or any other criteria, and jobs can be routed to specific tag groups.
Dynamic Models (OpenSCAD)
In addition to traditional 3D model files, Printago supports dynamic OpenSCAD parts natively, which are rendered on-demand at the time they're queued. OpenSCAD models can be modified programmatically based on parameters like text for engravings, custom dimensions, feature toggles, and material color. Dynamic models are key to automated customization, allowing you to offer personalized products without manual CAD work.
FabMatic Continuous Printing
FabMatic is Printago's continuous printing system that enables back-to-back production runs without manual intervention between prints. When enabled, FabMatic automatically sends the next queued job as soon as the current print completes and the bed is cleared via custom end G-code. This turns individual printers into production lines that can work through a queue of jobs unattended—particularly useful for overnight runs or high-volume manufacturing.
E-Commerce Integrations
Printago connects to e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Etsy to automate the flow from customer purchase to production. When a customer buys a product, the integration syncs the order, matches SKU identifiers to your Printago SKU definitions, and optionally queues jobs for production immediately. Combined with SKU Variants, a single product listing with multiple options (color, size, personalization) can automatically produce the correct parts with the correct materials and parameters.