More that 4 AMS one day?

Bambu Lab AMS General discussions
1

Hello,

Is it on your todo list to create a new hub that allows you to have more than 4 AMS on a single printer? So that you can have as many colours as possible :smiley:

Thanks in advance!

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2

I thought about buying a fifth to swap-out with #4 on occasion. #4 sits on top of the X1 and itā€™s easy to get to. I often change colors in that one. The other three are on a 3-tier shelf and harder to access. However, the $350 luxury is harder to take than just swapping a roll or two.

3

Just curious but what do you need more than 16 filaments for?

4

Thereā€™re more than 16 colors. And that doesnā€™t even include the different filament types. (PLA. PETG, etc., etc.) :smile:

5

If BL really wanted to, I bet it wouldnā€™t take much coding to daisy chain multiple AMS Hubs.

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6

A daisy chain solution would bring the overall reliability down. An 8-port hub would be preferable.

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7

The AMS units are daisy chained now with the power/signal cables. The hub just handles the filament but yeah, a larger hub would work too. It still takes some software/firmware changes to deal with the increase.

Edit: Iā€™m sure an upgraded power supply would be needed too.

8

I would like this too as ideally if AMSs were cheap enough and stackable I would like to keep at least 40 filaments ā€˜onlineā€™.
Would be fairly easy to use something like the AMS Lite print head top hub to allow an extra 3 PTFEs to go into the existing AMS hub, plus technically you could daily chain an extra AMS or electrically switch it in and out. So probably just a software limitation. Power I guess might be an issue - if for example you insert filaments into all 5 AMSs at the same time will they all power up their motors at the same time - or does it do them one at a time across all AMSs?

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9

For remote printing with a wide choice of colours and filament types. Without having to change each time by hand (and waste time going to the printer, etc.).
My printers are not where I live.

10

The AMS units are all powered by the printer. When you turn-on the printer, all AMS units are powered. The spool discovery occurs one at a time starting with the first AMS and continues for all of them for any that have filament preloaded. Thatā€™s why I turned discovery offā€“Iā€™m using only a couple of BL filaments. It was taking too long to ā€œreadā€ the nonexistent tags on all the spools. When I turn my printer on, I want to print. :smile:

11

It may not be possible without a redesign. I donā€™t know that though but in computers/electronics 16 is pretty magical and a lot of logic stuff is limited to 4, 8, or 16 ā€œthingsā€.

I donā€™t know their circuit but generally being powers of 2, they could have designed for a maximum of 16 where the next level would be 32 and probably unlikely it would be a serious consideration.

If everything is programmable, though, maybe there isnā€™t a limit except by the communications protocol. Maybe thatā€™s all that would need to change to get another address bit if itā€™s not already there?

But it may not be possible depending on how the circuitry in the AMS is done.

12

Perhaps, but if itā€™s a single character flag you can only have 16 possible bits (0-F). With two characters, the next level wouldnā€™t be 32. It would be 16 x 16 or 256. :astonished:

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13

would need a seperate powered hub.