I print in an office situation and we print 90% of our stuff in the same color of PETG so I always have two spools in the AMS for auto switch over. My complaint is that Studio and the X1C interface will always default to the lowest numbered AMS slot with the correct material in it. I would like it to default to the spool with the least material in it. So if you have full spool of Grey PETG in A1 and also a 25% spool of the same material in A4 it should default to A4 and use that spool until empty then switch to A1. This will help enforce some FIFO and prevent you from ending up in a situation where you end up with two 10% spools in the AMS and a big job that needs more material than those spools contain.
Defaulting to the least material maximizes the likelihood of a mid-print material change. While that is fairly low risk, it isn’t no risk. Additionally, there are always chances of slight material color mismatch due to batch to batch variation.
Sometimes, I’m OK with those things, but other times I would absolutely prefer to use the fuller spool first. At most, it would be better to have the option to choose, but I don’t agree, it isn’t better to always use the less full spool first.
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we print 90% of our stuff in the same color of PETG
Why not disconnect AMS and get a 5 kilo spool of PETG?
How would it know how much is left on the reel? Open the bay, put a half full reel in and a full reel in. Both look full to the machine.
I would tender an option that the user could choose to be their own default as there are many needs for any users that would not all share the same experience.
The auto refill feature on paper was impressive and when it works, it works well.
The process requires reworking to remove the bugs and introduce new features that are obvious extensions after use.
The option I first mentioned.
Add a setting that each user of Bambu Studio can choose and subsequently change to suit their needs
- Choose the first numerical matching spool when auto detecting
- Choose the spool with the detected least amount of remaining filament
- Choose the spool with the detected most amount of remaining filament
- Prompt the user of two or more matching spools appear and request selection
General improvements of the feature
- Fix the feature so when it is set to matching auto refill (the only current option) it actually does that and doesn’t match non-matching spool as it currently does without rhyme or reason.
- Add a non-matching auto refill option so users who wish to use up filaments without interest in the consistency of the resulting appearance this will achieve. This would be limited to compliant filament types, PLA & PETG would not form any chain as they do not bond.
- Add a custom option where the user can select any spools available from any AMS slots and drag and drop them to determine the order, a custom auto refill option.
The code to achieve this is simple and the effort to include would be minimal. The importance of the work over other pending features means the minimal effort may not venture an expedient application.
Bambu Lab may not care. The long running bugs in the auto refill option since its launch appears to determine any level of interest in fixing, let alone improving the feature by Bambu Lab.
As they have locked down the printers, there is little ability or interest in third-parties supporting improving Bambu Studio with a totally different offering.
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Maybe i need to qualify I only use Bambu filament. So it estimates the amount left on the spool when you put it it based of the RFID tag and rotations/diameter. The AMS is already reporting these estimates and you can see them in Studio and on the printer.
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Certain bambu printers can estimate the amount left on a spool by rolling the spool until they see the RFID. Then continuing to roll until the filament enters the extruder, and timing from RFID to extruder to estimate the circumference of the roll. They do this when a spool is loaded.
Auto refill works for me but the thing sometimes gets confused over which filaments are loaded. Theses a thing you can press to see which spools it will autoreload from, if your filament is correctly ID in the AMS, and you have synced bambu studio with the AMS, the autoreload indicator will show it, and I have never seen it get confused