Multiple Printers

I now have two of the X1C’s and I have spent the past day trying to figure out the best way to keep track of both of them from one instance of Bambu Studio.

For example, if the AMS filament for printer A is currently displayed but you want to print something on printer B, it seems that you have to go to the “Device” page, select that printer, and then return to the “Prepare” page and then resync the AMS. Admittedly, with only two printers, it’s not that much of a burden to bare, especially since both printers are right behind me so if I forget which printer I am working with at the moment I only need to turn around and look at the AMS.

However, this seems somewhat chaotic, so I was wondering if I was missing something obvious to make working with multiple printers a bit more streamline. It seems much easier to just bring up multiple instances of Bambu Studio (actually Orca Slicer, to be specific). I can’t imagine how people with printer farms keep track of them all.

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You could use user two different user accounts for each printer, every printer has it’s own cloud account, at least this is what I do.
Then you als have different user ID folders in the settings folder of the slicer (Windows: C:\Users\admin\AppData\Roaming\OrcaSlicer\user for example)…

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On a Mac you can open a new window in Studio, then choose the second printer. I watch both of mine this way.

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i want to get me a a1 mini as a lil brother for the p1s, besides opening a new instance of the studio i dont know another way… they maybe can add tabs inside bambustudio to just switch between printers…

I have 2 printers and each has one AMS unit, If I am printing White PETG which is filament 4 in the prepare tab, My printer named Bam has White PETG in slot 1 and my printer Named Bu has white PETG in slot 3. I can send a Print with filament 4 - White PETG to either printer and Bambu Studio will pick the correct AMS slot for white PETG for the printer that I send the print to.

You can add all of your filaments for both printers to the filament section of the prepare tab, sync with any AMS unit is not required.

With all filaments from Both printers AMS units in the prepare tab you can print to either printer as long as the printer you want to print to has the filaments required for the print you are sending.

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There is great aftermarket solutions for this now…
Like a wireless ‘tablet’ of sorts that connect to dozens of printers, send jobs, change settings keep you informed and more.
Load a model from the cloud or your own network, send to to any machine in your list and do what you would otherwise do in Bambu studio.

As ovityons already pointed out, there is working ways to do it all just in Bambu studio.
Print controls for multiple machines work well in Studio as well.
Although their implementation could be better.
Like by being able to have ALL printers accessible without having to switch around all the time.
Currently the interface seems to focus on single machine user.
Having a dedicated multi machine tab would be beneficial, especially if in there one could also find all related things in one place.

It takes a bit of a learning curve to get used to the Bambu ways but in most cases these Chinese guys already made things possible, just not always in the ways you might expect them to work or in the places you might expect to find them.
Those aftermarket controllers are definitely a blessing and their price is not THAT bad considering the features they offer.
They are getting close to being a viable stand alone option but are NOT fully there yet.
If you rely on using your 3MF files to print things in commercial quantities and with frequent file changes they are just great though.
Firmwares and the UI systems are constantly updated and once these aftermarket controllers are fully able to also slice and dice models directly Studio might be obsolete for most jobs.
If Bambu would provide a similar featured app for Android and IOS based tablets that also includes the main features of Studio we could have a winner…

Multi-device Management is finally coming to Bambu Studio.

It is currently available in the 1.9.1 Public Beta 4

https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/software/bambu-studio/multi-device-management

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The device overview will be handy.

It is annoying swapping between windows (on the Mac) to see which printer is doing what.

Although, I don’t do myself any favours as I often have multiple windows open at the same time as I often have multiple designs running at the same time and I am setting one up while others print and keeping those windows open so that I can review the printed work once complete if I need to send it again.

This means I sometimes have upwards of 10 BS windows open at once. I only have three open right now, a good day.

I couldn’t get this to work for me. When I opened the second instance of Bambu Studio my printers weren’t available to select. I would like to have a separate Bambu Studio window for each of my 3 Bambu printers but I don’t know how to do that. Is it possible?

In the second instance of Bambu Studio, go to the device tab, Click on the printer name and select the printer that you want to work with.

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It seems the second window is not logged in. Mine shows both are logged in when I select the home tab of each.

The way I do it is by selecting >File >New Window in Bambu studio. A second window pops up, it shows I’m still logged in, then I select the next printer. This works with the latest versions or studio and Mac OS.