It’s progress. They’re giving you something others can’t. It’s wonderful.
This mindset just isn’t the right framing. If they can do good convenient things, they should do them. I can’t find any filament makers who actually publish an accurate grams-per-meter figure on their filament specs, so even if they had the field available in the software, you’d have to measure the unrolled length of a fresh spool yourself to work it out — and nobody’s going to do that.
Bambu deserve to get credit (and money) for their innovations. If they had a licensing program for their NFC tags, I wouldn’t be mad at that. I hope that’s where they go with this in future, assuming their second generation of printers is just as popular as their first generation.
They could license this to other filament makers, who might add it to their spools, and charge an extra dollar or two, or maybe choose to eat the cost of it. Bambu would make millions of dollars from licensing, and other filament-makers would be more Bambu-friendly.
Then eventually, other printer-makers might license the NFC-reading tech for their printers. This would take years to trickle down, but it would be a really nice quality of life improvement for the entire industry.
The opensource history of 3D printing isn’t very amenable to this sort of thing, but also, until Bambu came along, we hadn’t really made much progress as an ENTIRE INDUSTRY in terms of quality of life improvements, in like… a decade.
So, capitalism has to get involved somewhere, if you want $5000 printer features in a sub-$2000 consumer unit.
Well, you use 2 brands. Someone else uses two other brands. Taking into account all users, well, guess what, we’re back at “all filament vendors existing”…
If you add a weight scale to each filament slot, and also know the weight of the empty spool…
So, to solve this issue you’re saying a new AMS needs to be designed, with suspended scales in each spool slot? This seems expensive. It would be nice if instead, manufacturers simply published a figure they already know, which is the weight per linear metre.
We could weigh one metre ourselves, but the error margin of 0.xx grams on our domestic kitchen scales, and so on, would make this measurement useless.
Far better to have these manufacturers just publish the precise number. This means no change to the AMS is necessary, and we can just put this information in, as part of our custom filament profile.
Sorry, I don’t see the advantage of using weight instead of the current approach that Bambu does… Seems like it would just make things more complicated, again, unless you add a scale to each slot, and even then, supporting third party spools without RFID would still require entering as many values as it would with the current approach…
Once we know how the system knows how much filament is left…then we can surmise a solution to to get non bambulab spools to work.
I had assumed each roll was serialized…it used a odometer measuring technique? This may not be the case. If I could buy tags from bambu for any filament… I would! After all RFIDs are cheap like pennies. I would see value in them at $1ea. It would be more profitable then handling all the filament for us! Having the sys detect is convenient, but not really necessary for me. I want them to succeed and support them with my wallet… I do like having different material options though.
This is available, they largely all give the filament density in g/cm3. So Bambu Studio could be using that for its odometer. I haven’t done the math my self but I would assume all the variables are there for a really good estimate of remaining filament.
It’s weight in addition to the current approach Bambu uses, which is to measure the length.
You literally can’t know how much is left on a spool measured by weight (1kg) if you only know how much unrolled length you’ve used.
I’ll give you some easy numbers, and you tell me how much is left on the spool, okay? — Here. You have a fresh 1kg spool. You’ve used 25 metres of filament. How much is left?
How much weight is left? — Unknown
How much length is left? — Unknown
You literally have no idea, UNLESS you know how length translates to weight.
Yes. Yes it is. — I feel silly for not digging into it, but rather having a conversation in this thread based on what everyone else in the thread was saying.
There is a density field already in the filament settings, which means you can get accurate estimates of how much filament is used, and remaining, by adjusting this value specifically for the filament you’re using.
This entire thread is a non-issue. Thanks for correcting me.
It knows the the weight of the spool - this is +/- the same for all spools. When you slice something - it estimates how much filament it will use in grams and in meters. (you know density of filament, you know diameter, you know how many meters were pulled so you can calculate weight that has been used for the print). Additionally, printer memorizes your RFID.
BUT, if you move this roll to another printer and another AMS and print some amount and then put this spool back into original printer - it won’t be aware of weight change and still will be displaying old information as before removal.
Then a few posts down where I unspooled what I had previously spooled and spool a different spool that was nearly empty.
In both cases, the same rfid tag (same core that had previously been used up) reported an accurate measurement.
Another example, when you buy an X1C you get three partial spools, all three report accurately. I’m 100% certain they aren’t spoiling those spools with your machine you receive.
Partial spools could have different weight written in RFID. I haven’t seen anywhere that rfids are open for writing. the only way to ensure - scan rfid for the full spool and after you finish it. If info is the same means no writing to RFID occurs and all calculations are done on the printer side. Those calculations are already done on slicing step for non-bambu filament that has no RFID: you have in the project how much in meters and grams you print will consume (based on the density info of the filament profile.) So again, slicer already knows how much in gr the print will take for non bambu filament. Reading spool weight from RFID will fill in the missing gap of initial weight. I’ll go with Occam’s razor and most simple explanations as there are no weight sensors inside AMS.
Here’s a video I made showing starting with an empty core (came from the green basic plan that came with my X1C), respooling it with some red hatchbox that’s almost gone, loading that and showing the printer detects a nearly empty spool, unspooling that and respooling it with some green Printbed PLA and loading it again showing it’s a full spool. No clue how the printer knows (hence the entire purpose of the thread…it wasn’t ever intended to get third-party spools to read) but it knows somehow.
As Long as were talking RFID’s, I reloaded a partial spool of BL Basic PLA that came with the new machine. It refused to recognize what PLA it was or the color. The only change other than being low on filament was a dehydrator insert in the core. The RFID was not impeded in any way. AMS slot 1
I have a thought on how this works. There may be encoders on the spool holding rollers. When the spool is first loaded, lots of strange things happen (back and forth, etc.). So if the X1 pulls 6 inches of material and the spool turns a little, it’s because there is a full spool. If the spool turns a lot, there is a near-empty spool. Btw, mine does not work properly and it pretty much never knows. I may need an update.
