RFID chips…Yes, RFID chips. There are many filament providers and sources for our filaments and it’s not a secret to Bambu that we are sometimes using other filaments other than Bambu brand in our AMS. It seems that if Bambu wants to be the top brand in their field, they could research and incorporate the most common RFID readers in the AMS to be able to read other brand filament RFID tags to inform our Bambu Lab printers who’s filaments we have loaded. Just saying…
This is not as simple as it sounds.
All the companies that use RFID in their spools have different standards they are going off of.
The most common filament brands don’t even use RFID. It is a nice feature to have, but I don’t need my basic polymaker filament to cost more than it already does.
The best solution is to have programable tags, but that would take away the convince of having RFID in the first place.
Exactly.
I might also add that RFID on material is one of the things that Stratasys is suing Bambu over.
One standard protocol that everyone used could mean that Stratasys would have an easier time shutting it down as opposed to a bunch of different protocols.
I dont want to turn this into another patent thread, but I linked the relevant patents above if anyone wants to read into them.
Label and save your Bambu RFID tags. I’ve had great luck taping Bambu RFID tags on Elegoo and Sunlu filament spools. Just keep track of plastic and color and you’re golden.
There are also snap-in holders for the tags on MakerWorld.
Obviously the filaments need to print well using Bambu settings but you can also adjust those if needed.
Last year Prusa launched OpenPrintTag, a fully reusable and open-source NFC tag. So it could be very simple but unfortunately Bambu prefers a closed ecosystem.
And there is OpenTag3D which is yet another open source competing standard.
Programmable Tags…No that’s an idea
Thats just another standard to compete against.
What would be so inconvenient in ‘programming’ and attaching a tag? The most inconvenient part is a printer that doesn’t support one or more open standards. Thanks for the downvote btw.
I actually, respectfully disagree. Bambu doesn’t have to force it onto everyone. All they have to do is to open it up for others to use and then a couple of major players would immediately pick it up with the rest coming from community on printables/makerworld.
RFID tags costs so little that the likelihood of that causing any price increase is zero to none (abstaining form idiotic manufacturers who would intentionally jump up the price because of that).
Mind you, RFID tags is one of the things that BL promised in the past and never delivered.
Exactly. The problem with OpenPrintTag is that it is a solution to a wrong problem. They are trying to unify tags. While the problem right now is that there are no manufacturers with tags to begin with… lol. There is a BL for BL printers… and there is a Prusament with … no Prusa printers to read those tags.
To be honest, that Prusa initiative is the one that I still laugh maniacally at Prusa. They had a few “revisions” to their printers over the past year since the intro to OpenPrintTag, but in no cases they’ve added readers to actually read anything or sync it with anything. What’s the point then?
My point was not really about the cost of the tags themselves. I agree, they are cheap.
My point was actually what you said here…
For the companies that currently offer RFID tagged filament, it tends to cost more than varieties that don’t use RFID. Although if it becomes more standard this will probably change, but that is not going to be any time soon.
Just use Creality as an example. Their Hyper PLA (without tags) cost $19.99, while their variant with RFID cost $22.99. For the same filament, they are charging a 3 dollar premium.
OpenPrintTag is a novel idea, they simply don’t have the infrastructure built for it. I feel like that is more of a community project rather than a business goal for Prusa.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Gotcha
Filament manufacturers shouldn’t even care. Users could just buy the tags their printer supports, a simple RFID writer doesn’t cost that much. Bambu could even start selling their own proprietary writers and tags, maybe that would even circumvent the Stratasys patent.
Could be wrong but seems like adoption of Prusa’s OpenPrintTag has been… crickets?
Even with their own Prusaments, only 3 carries it. Not even their PETGs 
Not surprising to say the least, despite the cheap cost, everything is just too fragmented so taking on the initiative pretty much amounts to waste of time.
That patent is worth a read. It pretty much specifies any way possible there is to identify the filament on a spool. QR codes, optical character recognition, I think even braille, and a number of others I forget off the top of my head.
I certainly don’t know but I suspect most manufacturers are a bit wary of consequences for what they might consider an unnecessary change/addition.
It would sure be nice if everyone could all use some kind of standard but it’s how patents work.
No, all their materials are with the NFC tags. They used to carry 2 SKUs of the old and new stock trying to sell the old stock first. That’s how I ended up with more than 50kg of Prusament last Christmas for a very good price.
And I can personally confirm that new PETG are NFC spools, I received one as a warranty replacement for defective spool and they’ve sent me an NFC PETG.
Good to know, Weird outdated page then.
RFID tags on the spools are nice and everything, but somehow I manage to survive if they aren’t there. I might lean in that direction but missing tags doesn’t stop me from buying filament I want to print with. It was important to me while I was getting started but I’ve gotten over it. I don’t think I’d care for yet another system and procedure I’d have to curate.