Printer Management

Key Concepts

Printer management is how you configure your physical printers so they can participate in Printago's automatic job matching and production system. Each printer needs three things to receive jobs: assigned materials (so the queue knows what filament is loaded), slicer profiles (so the cloud slicer can generate G-code for that machine), and printer-specific settings like bed type and AMS configuration. Once configured, a printer enters the queue's matching pool and can receive jobs automatically based on material compatibility and tag filters. Day-to-day operations center on marking printers as "clear and ready" after removing a completed print, swapping materials when needed, and monitoring status. The goal is to make each printer a self-sufficient worker in your production system—load filament, clear the bed, and let Printago handle job routing and slicing.

Required Configuration

For jobs to match with printers from the queue, each printer must be properly configured:

1. Material Assignment

• At least one material must be loaded and assigned to the Printer.
• Materials are assigned through the Material Assignment window

2. Slicer Profiles

• Machine Profile: Slicer setting from Bambu Studio or Orca (default or sync'd User Profile)
• Process Profile: Used as a fallback whenever a part does not specify a process profile.

3. Printer-Specific Settings

For Bambu Lab printers:

• Bed Type: Smooth PEI, Textured, etc.
• Use AMS: Controls whether the printer uses the AMS system. The Printers list only shows the active material source (AMS slots or external spool)
• Bed Leveling & Flow Calibration: Standard Bambu "start print" options

Slicer Configuration Dialog

The slicer configuration dialog (titled Configuration for [printer name]) is where you set the printer's Machine Profile, Process Profile, Bed Type, and Additional Settings such as Use AMS, Bed Leveling, Flow Calibration, and Enable Timelapse. Profile dropdowns are prefixed with System: or User: so you can tell built-in profiles from your own synced ones.

• Printer page: Click the "Slicer Configuration" button
• Dashboard: Click gear icon ⚙️ on any printer

Multi-Printer Configuration

For multiple printers with identical model and nozzle configuration, click Save to all N similar printers in the configuration dialog.

Quick Select: In the Printers List, select one printer and press G to automatically select all printers with matching model and nozzle size.

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Printers List

Navigate to Printing → Printers to view all printers with their current status and loaded materials. Click on any printer to go to its Printer page

Display Information

• Name: Shows the printer's name, model, nozzle diameter, and serial number.
• Filament: Shows the external spool (SP) plus AMS/CFS slot chips when a multi-material unit is in use
• Status: Current state, such as Busy, Ready, Offline, Awaiting clear & ready state, or Needs configuration
• Material Assignment: Click any filament slot to open the Printer Materials dialog
• Configuration Warnings: Alerts about issues that prevent the printer from accepting jobs (e.g., Missing Filament Profiles)

Use the Add Printers button to connect new printers, the search box to filter the list, and the column picker at the top right to configure which columns are shown.

Multi-Printer Actions

Select multiple printers using checkboxes to access bulk operations via the Actions menu.

Keyboard Shortcuts:

• A - Toggle select all printers (press again to deselect all)
• G - Select all printers matching the first selected (same model/nozzle)
• R - Mark selected printers as ready (skips printers that are currently printing)

Available Actions:

• Availability: Mark ready (R) or not-ready (U)
• FabMatic: Enable/disable continuous printing
• Control Panel: Multi-printer control (P)
• Configure: Bulk slicer configuration (C)
• Materials: Bulk material assignment (M)
• Tags: Bulk tag editing (T)
• Temperature: Quick bed/nozzle temperature presets

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Printer Page

Each printer has its own page, laid out as an operator console: an identity bar at the top, a row of quick actions under it, and four tabs for everything else. It reflows for the screen you are on, so the same page works from a phone at the printer as it does from a desk: on a narrow screen the quick actions tile into thumb-sized rows while the Control tab keeps the same layout as on a larger screen.

Identity bar

Across the top you get the printer's name (rename it from the Settings tab) and a Connected or Offline pill beside it, which is the one place the console says whether the printer can be reached. Under the name, a line reads the printer's model, what it is doing, and how far through a print it is. An unreachable printer says so in the pill and leaves that line to the model, so the same fact is never in two places to disagree with itself. On the right, Slicer Config opens the slicer configuration dialog, and the ⋮ menu holds maintenance mode, Run Macro, Force refresh state, and Delete printer. A printer that cannot slice yet says Needs Configuration in place of Slicer Config, and its Settings tab shows a red ! until slicing is set up.

Force refresh state re-checks whether the printer is online and available for jobs against what it is reporting right now, instead of waiting for the check Printago runs every few minutes. Use it when a printer that is clearly idle is not picking up jobs. It only ever marks a printer online or available, never the other way, and it leaves printers that are mid-print, disabled or in maintenance alone. If nothing recent has been heard from the printer, it says so, which usually points at the printer's connection or Fuse.

Quick actions

The actions you reach for most often sit in one row, available from every tab:

• Pause and Stop, live only while a print is running, each asking you to confirm first
• Light, which switches the printer's work light
• Home, which homes every axis (disabled mid-print)
• Confirm clear & ready, on the right, which puts the printer back in the matching pool (see Ready State Management)

Light and Home only appear on a printer that reports one, so a machine with no work light does not offer a switch for it. Nozzle and bed targets are set on the Control tab.

Tabs

• Monitor: the camera, showing how old the last frame is, and marked LIVE only while a stream is actually playing rather than a picture refreshing (see Live Streaming for pausing and closing a stream); nozzle and bed temperatures, and chamber on a printer that has one; the running job with its order, parts, stage, layer, time left and the clock time it should finish, the loaded filament, fan speeds, and any HMS alerts from Bambu Lab printers with links to the relevant Bambu Lab Wiki articles.
• Control: the movement pad, temperatures and fans described in Printer Control Panel, plus Skip Objects while a print is running or Calibration while the printer is idle.
• History: every finished print attempt on this printer. See Print history.
• Settings: name, tags, slicer configuration, materials, the Hardware card, maintenance, custom fields, and Save, Cancel and Delete printer.

The tab you are on is kept in the address bar, so a link to a printer can point straight at its History or Settings.

Print history

The History tab lists attempts rather than jobs, so a print that failed and was retried shows both the failure and the retry, each with when it ended, how long it ran, the filament it used, its order number, and whether it succeeded, failed or was cancelled. A summary at the top gives the success rate across the attempts shown.

Failed and cancelled attempts offer Reprint, which puts that same job back in the queue. Finished prints offer Print again, which opens the usual print dialog on the part so you can set quantity, materials and parameters before it builds — a brand new job rather than re-running a print that is already done. An attempt whose part has since been deleted has nothing to open, so it offers no Print again at all.

Ready State Management

The Confirm clear & ready for next print button is critical for queue processing. Click after:

• Print completion
• Printer recovery from unknown state
• Printer comes online
• Manual bed clearing

Once a printer is confirmed ready, the same button shows Hold, not ready so you can take the printer back out of the matching pool without disconnecting it.

Alternatives:

• Multi-action from Printers page
• FabMatic mode for continuous operation

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Hardware Card

The Hardware card at the bottom of the printer page describes the machine Printago believes it is talking to: its nozzles, bed, chamber, axes, fans, lights, sensors, filament sources and cameras, the capabilities it supports (start, pause, skip objects, and so on), the adapter Printago drives it with, and its firmware version. Expand any row with a chevron to see the individual components and their component refs.

Hardware card: what Printago knows about the machine, ending with the adapter and the reported firmware version

Use Advanced in the card header to inspect or override the resolved capabilities. Editing those requires printer configuration permission.

Firmware

The Firmware row shows the version string the printer itself reported, so you can quote it in a support thread or check it against a vendor release note. Click it to copy it to the clipboard.

Each vendor reports its own format and Printago shows it verbatim: a Bambu Lab machine reports something like 01.08.02.00, Klipper reports v0.12.0-345-g8a4a1c2, PrusaLink reports 6.1.3, and an Elegoo Centauri Carbon reports V1.2.3. Printago never parses, compares or normalizes the string, and it does not tell you whether an update is available. Updating firmware stays in the vendor's own app or on the printer's screen.

Where the version comes from depends on the printer:

Printer	Version shown
Bambu Lab	The ota module's version, the same one the printer's screen shows
Klipper / Moonraker	The Klipper software version
Elegoo (Centauri Carbon, CC2)	The printer's OTA firmware version
Anycubic	The firmware version reported when Printago connects
Prusa	The printer firmware version, or the PrusaLink version on older builds that do not report one
OctoPrint	The OctoPrint server version, because OctoPrint fronts arbitrary hardware and does not expose the printer's own firmware

The row is hidden entirely when there is no version to show, and never for any other reason. That happens when the printer has not connected since Printago last started, when the printer did answer but reported no version or refused the request (Printago asks once on connect, and connects anyway when the answer does not come), or when it is a Bambu Lab printer connected through Bambu's cloud rather than through Fuse, which is a path where Printago cannot ask for the version. A printer that has just come online may take a few seconds to report it.

Taking a printer offline does not hide the row: firmware is a property of the machine rather than a live reading, and it is most often wanted when the printer is down, so the row keeps showing the version that printer last reported.

The version is read once per connection, so a printer that is updated while connected keeps showing the old version until it reconnects.

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Material Assignment

Click any AMS slot or external spool to open the Printer Materials dialog (titled Printer Materials for [printer name]).

Multi-toolhead and multi-material printers

The same slot-based assignment applies beyond Bambu AMS. Multi-toolhead machines (Snapmaker U1, Prusa XL) show each toolhead as its own slot, and printers with auto-detected filament systems (Creality CFS, Elegoo's multi-color canvas) grow their slot count as units are attached.

The dialog has three areas:

• Loaded Filament: A slot picker showing the external spool plus each AMS slot. Click a slot to view or change its assignment.
• Assigned Material: The material currently assigned to the selected slot, with Reset slot and Re-read slot buttons for clearing the assignment or re-reading the loaded filament.
• Available Materials: A searchable list of your material library, grouped by base material with expandable color variants. Materials with profiles set up for this printer show a ✓ Profile Configured badge; starred materials sort to the top.

How Material Assignment Works

The standard material assignment process:

1. Click any slot: Select an AMS slot or external spool
2. Choose material: Select from the Available Materials list and assign it to the slot
3. Assignment options:
   • Specific material (e.g., "Bambu Basic PLA - Black") - uses configured profiles (recommended)
   • Generic type (e.g., "Any PLA") - prompts for inline slicing profile selection

Generic Material Assignment

While you can set a generic filament profile directly on the printer (bypassing Printago's material system), this isn't recommended. Here's why:

• Limited matching: Only parts set to Any {Material-Type} will match (e.g. "Any PLA")
• More specific Part settings won't match: If a part requires "Bambu TPU for AMS" specifically, it won't match a generic "Any TPU-AMS" assigned printer.
• Reduced flexibility: You lose the benefits of Printago's material management system

Bambu Lab RFID Enhancement

When using Bambu Lab RFID-tagged filament, the process is enhanced with automatic detection:

Automatic Material Detection

• Auto-reads: Printago automatically detects the material and color from the RFID tag
• Instant assignment: Material is assigned without manual selection
• Missing material workflow: Quick-add buttons appear for materials not in your library

Missing Material Quick-Add

When RFID-tagged filament isn't in your library:

Step 1: Add Base Material Click Add missing material for [Bambu] { MATERIAL-TYPE } to add the base material (e.g., "TPU for AMS").

Step 2: Add Color Variant Click Add missing variant "{ COLOR }". This opens a compact in-place form so you can confirm or rename the variant before it's created, so no more silent web-color guesses (like "Crimson") get baked into your library. The new variant is automatically assigned to the slot you were looking at.

Step 3: Configure Profiles Save the Printer, and go to the Materials page to set up slicing profiles for the Material.

RFID Override

To assign a different material than the RFID tag, click "Assign a material manually" to enable normal selection from your Material library.

Bambu Lab Material Handling

• External spool material can be assigned without physical material loaded
• AMS slots require physical material to be loaded before assignment
• All Bambu Lab materials and variants are built into Printago for easy addition

Material Slicer Configuration Warning

When selecting materials for a printer, it's possible to assign a material which doesn't have a slicing profile assigned to it for the model of printer in question.

Materials tagged with Missing Profile (won't match) is letting you know that jobs will not be able to be assigned to this material in the printer until it's resolved. This commonly happens when switching nozzle sizes (e.g., from 0.4mm to 0.2mm) or adding new printer models without matching material profiles.

Resolution: Go to Materials page → Open material → Configure slicing profiles for each printer model + nozzle diameter combination

Material Library

For detailed material management and profile configuration, see the Materials documentation.

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AMS Configuration

The Use AMS checkbox in slicer configuration controls:

When Enabled:

• AMS slots visible in UI
• AMS information shown on printer lists
• Multi-slot material management

When Disabled:

• Only external spool holder available
• AMS hidden from interface
• Single material assignment

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Related Documentation

• Printer Tags: Dynamic printer grouping and job routing
• Printer Control Panel: Manual printer operation and calibration
• Materials: Material library management and profiles
• Cloud Slicer: Understanding slicer profiles and settings
• FabMatic: Continuous printing automation

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