Continue printing from another slot when current one is overloaded

Bambu Lab Software Feature Requests
1

firmware-feature

Hi there!

Feature idea: add the ability to continue printing from another AMS slot when printing from the current one becomes impossible, of course, with the same filament is loaded in the other slot.

It is definitely NOT the same with the feature when printer supports changing filament during print. It’s a logical continuation of AMS sense.

Current situation:

  • The job has been loaded for a total of 12 hours.
  • After 4 hours of printing, the filament jammed between the spool and the other loops, AMS motor overloaded, printing stopped.
  • I’m at work, so the printer will sit idle for the next 6 hours until I return, and then require another 8 hours to finish printing.

How it could work:
The AMS can resume printing when one spool runs out, provided that the same filament is installed in another slot. (By the way, I mostly use AMS for continuous printing rather than for color changes.) In the printer’s settings, you could add the following options for when it isn’t possible to continue from the current slot:

  1. Do nothing and send the user an error notification (as it does now).
  2. Send the user an error message plus a prompt to continue printing from another available slot.
  3. Automatically resume printing from an available slot and notify the user that the current spool is blocked but printing has continued from another slot.

Benefits of implementing this feature:

  • Environmental: Even when the printer isn’t actively printing, the bed remains heated — wasting electricity and heating the air.
  • Time optimization: The user’s print job finishes sooner without unnecessary downtime.
  • Increased throughput: More printer uptime in a shorter period, leading to greater wear of parts — and ultimately, more sales for Bambu :slight_smile:
2

Isn’t the filament loaded all the way to the extruder? How would you clear that as there is no way to cut it at the AMS and the PTFE tube is full?

3

When the motor is overloaded, AMS pulls the filament back and tries again.
In this case, the filament is pulled almost all the way, and only after the second attempt does an error occur. The print path remains free after the first repetition. What prevents the filament from being pulled back after the second try and initiating printing from another slot?

4

This might help for tangled/knots in spool, but a probably large % of problems in this scenario are hotend/extruder malfunctions, not filament, and switching to another filament to ram into the same clogged hole is not productive. System would have to be pretty sure about the nature of the problem

5

Definitely. But I’m 99% sure that Bambu can differ clogged extruder from overloaded AMS motor as there are different errors :slight_smile:
And clogged extruder leads to blocking filament inside extruder. In this case motor can push filament but it cannot be extruded. In the described scenario motor can not push filament. It’s different hardware parts with different symptoms.

6

Not really, a lot of the time, when a spool runs out, it overloads the feeder because of the tension from the tape or kink at the end. Sometimes just pressing resume and letting it try again works, but often I have to manually change the spool.

This would be a great feature and it shouldn’t be too hard to implement