How Slicing Works
Key Concepts
Every print job that leaves Printago is sliced against exactly three kinds of settings: one machine profile (the printer), one or more filament profiles (one per material the part uses), and one process profile (layer height, infill, supports, and the rest of the print quality settings). Those settings can be configured in several places: on the printer, on the material, on the part, or baked inside a 3MF project file. This page explains where each one is resolved from, which setting wins when more than one applies, and what actually gets handed to the slicer.
The short version: the printer supplies the machine profile, the loaded material supplies the filament profiles, and the process profile is the one that can be overridden, first by the part and then by the file itself.
The Three Profile Slots
The slicer is always given the same three slots, in this order.
| Slot | Resolved from | Can a part change it? |
|---|---|---|
| Machine profile | The printer the job was matched to (Printers → printer → Configure) | No |
| Filament profiles | The material loaded in the slot the job matched, through that material's profile assignment | No, the part asks for a material, the printer's loaded spools decide the profile |
| Process profile | The printer's default process profile, unless the part overrides it or the part is a 3MF using its embedded settings | Yes |
A job only becomes eligible for a printer once that printer has both a machine profile and a process profile configured. Until then the queue reports the printer as not set up, and it is skipped during matching. See Print Queue for how matching works.
The Full Path
Step by Step
1. The job is matched to a printer
Nothing is resolved until a job leaves the queue and is assigned to a specific machine. This matters: the same part printed on two different printers is sliced twice, against two different machine profiles, and can end up with different filament profiles if the two printers have different spools loaded.
2. Printago picks the slicer version
The slicer engine and version come from your store setting (Settings → Slicer), unless the part has its own slicer override, in which case the part wins. Profiles are then looked up for that exact version. If a profile has no data for that version, Printago falls back to the most recent version it does have, so an older profile keeps working when you move the store to a newer slicer.
3. Machine profile: from the printer
The machine profile is whichever profile is set on the printer itself, under Printers → printer → Configure → Machine Profile. If you have imported or customized a machine profile, that one is used; otherwise the built-in profile for the model is used. There is no way for a part to change the machine profile: the printer that runs the job defines its own hardware.
4. Filament profiles: from the loaded material
A part declares which materials it needs (for example "material 1: PLA, material 2: PLA in a different color"). It does not declare filament profiles. When the queue matches a job to a printer, each of the part's materials is paired with a real loaded slot on that printer, and the filament profile comes from that slot, resolved in this order:
- The profile assigned to the exact material variant loaded in the slot (for example "Printago PLA Basic, Matte Black")
- The profile assigned to the material the variant belongs to
- The profile the printer reports for the material type in that slot
If a slot matches a material but no filament profile can be resolved for it, the printer is not eligible for that job and the queue says so, naming the material. Assign profiles to your materials under Printing → Materials. See Materials.
Two extra things happen at this stage:
- Skipped materials. A part material marked as skipped does not consume a slot, and reuses another mapped material's filament profile as a placeholder so the slicer still has a complete set.
- Per-variant tuning. If a material variant has a pressure advance value set, it is written into that variant's filament profile for this slice only. Your saved profile is not modified.
5. Process profile: the ladder
The process profile is where multiple settings sources can compete. Printago resolves it top down and the last applicable rule wins.
| Priority | Source | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (lowest) | Printer's default process profile | The baseline for every job that printer runs |
| 2 | Part's process profile (Part → Process Profile) | Layered on top of the printer's process profile, so it only changes the settings it actually specifies |
| 3 | Embedded 3MF Profile (Part → Process Profile → Embedded 3MF Profile) | Replaces the process profile entirely with the settings saved inside the 3MF |
| 4 (highest) | Merged plate settings | When jobs are combined onto one plate, the plate-wide values resolved for that merge are applied last. See Plate Merging |
A few consequences worth knowing:
- Choosing a named process profile on a part is a layer, not a replacement. Anything the part's profile does not specify still comes from the printer's process profile, which is what lets one "0.28mm Draft" part profile work across every printer model in your farm.
- Printer compatibility fields are never taken from the part's profile. Whether a process profile is allowed to run on a given printer is always decided by the printer's own profile, so a part override cannot accidentally make a job unprintable on machines it should fit.
- Setting a part's process profile back to Printer Default removes the override, and that part immediately follows whatever each printer is configured with.
You can set the process profile on many parts at once from the parts list with the bulk editor.
6. Printer and material adjustments
Just before slicing, a few printer-specific values are applied on top of the resolved profiles, for example the build plate type configured for a Bambu printer. These come from the printer's settings, not from any profile, so switching a printer to a textured plate changes its next slice without touching your profiles.
7. Hand-off to the slicer
The resolved machine, filament, and process settings are written out as three sets of files and handed to the cloud slicer along with the model file, the plate to slice, and the real colors of the loaded spools. The slicer loads those settings on top of whatever the input file contains, which is the key to the next section.
8. The slice cache
Printago fingerprints the whole slicing input: the model file, all three resolved profiles, the slicer version, the printer's settings, the plate, and the matched materials. If an identical slice has already been produced, the existing result is reused instead of slicing again. Change any part of that combination (a profile edit, a different color, a different printer model) and the job is sliced fresh.
Part Types and What Gets Sliced
Printago handles different part types differently, and only some of them carry their own embedded settings.
| Part type | Sliced? | Embedded settings |
|---|---|---|
| STL / STEP | Yes | None, the file is geometry only |
| OpenSCAD / CadQuery / build123d | Yes, after the model is generated | None, the generated geometry is sliced like an STL |
| 3MF project | Yes | Yes, a full set of slicer settings saved by Bambu Studio or Orca Slicer |
| G-code 3MF (already sliced) | No | Already sliced, sent to the printer as is |
G-code (raw .gcode) | No | Already sliced, sent to the printer as is |
Pre-sliced files skip this entire pipeline. Nothing in Printago re-slices them or applies a profile to them, which is exactly why they are pinned to the printer and material they were sliced for. See G-code and G-code 3MF Files.
Embedded 3MF Profiles
A 3MF project file saved from Bambu Studio or Orca Slicer contains the settings the file was designed against: the process settings, the filament settings, and the printer it was sliced for. Printago reads that information when you upload the part.
On upload, Printago pulls out the printer model, nozzle diameter, and material list, and turns the first two into required printer tags on the part. That is what stops a file authored for a 0.4mm nozzle from being matched to a 0.8mm machine.
At slice time, what happens depends on the part's process profile setting:
When Embedded 3MF Profile is selected, Printago hands the slicer an empty process profile so nothing overrides what the file already specifies. The result is a print that uses the exact quality settings the file was authored with, including per-object settings and modifiers.
Even with Embedded 3MF Profile selected, the machine profile still comes from the printer and the filament profiles still come from the loaded material. This is deliberate: it is what lets a 3MF authored on one machine print correctly on another compatible machine, with the spools actually loaded on the day. If you need the file's exact filament settings too, import them as profiles and assign them to the material.
Modifiers, painted supports, per-object settings, and multi-plate layouts all live in the file's geometry data and are preserved regardless of which process profile you choose.
Estimates Versus Real Prints
Print time and material estimates shown on a part are produced by a separate slice that runs when you upload the part, before any printer is involved. Because there is no printer and no loaded spool at that point, estimates use your store's default profiles instead. Treat estimates as an approximation of the settings a real job will use, not a guarantee: the real job resolves its profiles against the machine it actually lands on.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Where to look |
|---|---|
| A printer never gets matched, queue says profiles are not configured | The printer is missing a machine or process profile. Open Printers → printer → Configure |
| Queue says the material matches but no filament profile is configured | The loaded material has no profile assigned. Open Printing → Materials and assign one |
| A print used the wrong quality settings | Check the part's Process Profile field first. Printer Default means the printer's profile decided it |
| A 3MF ignored the settings I saved in Bambu Studio | The part's process profile is not set to Embedded 3MF Profile |
| A profile edit did not change the next print | Confirm the profile you edited is the one the printer or part points at, and that the job was not served from the slice cache with the old inputs |
| A part only matches one printer model | 3MF parts carry required printer model and nozzle tags from the file. Check the part's print tags |
Related Pages
- Slicer Profiles, getting profiles into Printago
- Import Profiles, importing preset bundles
- Materials, assigning filament profiles to materials
- 3MF Project Files, working with 3MF parts
- Print Queue, how jobs are matched to printers