Ok, this seems like I’m missing something obvious or maybe I just don’t understand how Bambu Studio is supposed to work.
Let’s start with the Prepare screen. I have the A1 synced, but I changed some of the spools in the AMS so they weren’t correct in this screen. I’m using Bambu Labs filament and they all have the RFID thingy in the spool. My understanding was that Studio should read the filaments that are there and update this screen, but it doesn’t. I had to manually set all these filaments to be correct, which they are here:
I tried using the Sync Button, which seems like it should detect what is on the spools and update, but again, it doesn’t. In this shot you’ll see that it somehow reset the filament type and colors to something else that isn’t correct.
It also mentions that it can’t read the filament because it’s already loaded, which doesn’t make sense.
Lastly, when I went to the Print screen, it allowed be to choose spool 2, but didn’t show any other spool options, just question marks like it didn’t know what was there.
My main concern here is that the model is now printing off of Spool 2, which will empty before the project is finished. I have a new spool of the correct filament on spool 3, but I don’t know whether it will auto-advance to the next spool when 2 runs out since it appears that it doesn’t know anything is in that location.
What am I missing about the filament information in the prepare vs. Device vs. Print screens? it seems like they should all sync up.
Update: it behaved like I expected it would, which is to say, incorrectly. With the printer set to move to the next spool when one emptied, it should have gone to spool 3 to continue. The spool ran to the end, but like most spools, the filament is taped to the cardboard reel so it just stopped turning and the printer acted like the spool was stuck, not empty. In order to fix it, I had to remove the empty off of position 2 and put the full spool that was on 3 and move it to 2, clear the fault, and then continue the print. This defeats one of the primary purposes of an AMS, which is uninterrupted printing. This all seems to point back to the printer not really being aware of the fact that there was a spool in position 3, even after syncing. I’m completely confused, although I’m kind of a noob to this, I have done a few dozen prints and feel like I’m using it as it should be. Any thoughts?
You should power off your printer and power it back on. That will force the AMS to reset and read each spool. If you’re using BBL filament it will read the RFID tags on the spools and populate the AMS with the correct filaments. This process takes a few minutes to complete. It will spin each spool and make sure it can push the filament from each spool to the extruder before it continues.
You then want to go to the device page in BB Studio to see what filaments it detected, and if it didn’t detect any properly then this is where you can set each spool correctly manually by clicking the pen on the spool in each slot to edit it. Make sure each one is the proper filament type and color.
Once you have confirmed that all spools are correct, only then should you sync the filaments from the AMS. At this point if you have an open project in BB Studio you’ll have to decide if you want to Map the filaments or Overwrite them. Usually mapping is the one I choose, but it depends on the situation. After mapping the filaments, make sure that your colors are correct for your project, (IE: everything is using the right colors that you want), if not you can change the filaments from the dropdown to use the proper AMS slotted filament (note that you won’t see the actual slot number in the dropdown, just type and color).
You also need to make sure on the device page that you click on the settings icon for the AMS and make sure that “AMS filament backup” is selected to enable the Auto-refill feature.
The printer may or may not have been aware of the full position 3 spool, but it was definitely not aware that position 2 was empty. The printer uses the filament sensor in the toolhead to detect when it is out of filament and that it is time to switch to the next spool. This is a problem when the tape holds the filament to the spool, because there is still filament at the toolhead sensor, so there is never a switch to the new spool.
