We need to replace our aging Ultimaker 3 printers and these Carbons or the new Prusa MK4 seem like the best reasonable choice. My issue is how to run Carbons in a multiple user environment? What are other people doing in schools, businesses or other makerspaces. Any insight is appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
You have the option to run them as LAN-only without the cloud login. There is just an authentication code (on the printer screen) needed for connection. Should be ideal for a Maker Space environment I think…
I was going to post the same question when yours came up. What did you end up doing? Which printers did you go with?
Not really. Using this in a university setting, the Bambu printers don’t really use LAN or WPA2 well and there is very little documentation or support for this. I would go old school and have people just use a flash drive to “send” prints to the printer but I don’t trust micro SD card slots hold up to 1000’s of uses and they don’t believe in using USB sticks instead like the Prusa MK4. Also, with the muitl-filament capabilities, you can’t really “see” or sync with what filaments are loaded without actually “owning” the printer through Bambu Studio. Overall, I love the printers but I took for granted how easy Ultimaker made it for many users to share 4 printers.
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We bought 2 Bambu printers and a single Prusa MK4. The Bambus fall down on their face when trying to run LAN and they don’t like our WPA2 education network so they are WiFI for now and only certain users are given access to the login and password. We all have to “share” the one account that interfaces with the printer and eventually this is going to fail miserably.
The Prusa is great for it’s simplicity and it uses a USB stick so printing with it is easy since you put the file on the stick, put it in the printer and hit print. That being said, their wireless printing / networking is laughably bad and we don’t have multi–filament or even a web cam to monitor the print, so it’s very basic.
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If sneakernet works, plug in an adapter once, and use full size SD cards, which are easier to handle than microSD.
Search for “TF Micro SD To SD Card Extension”
It’s an ugly workaround, but at least reduces wear on the microSD slot.
MicroSd to MicroSD extensions are also available.
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I feel Bambu hopes to get Gov and School customers to pay for the X1E.
Although it allows the printer to connect to the network, until Studio makes allowances for multiple users on one printer, we are all still sharing a single account to run the printer.
Your request for multi-user accounts isn’t the first and won’t be the last. We’re all requesting it for use cases like yours, or simply for the whole household to use. Hopefully we get an update this year that will allow this…
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