Currently AMS Auto Refill only supports switching to exact same type and color. This request is to add the capability for setting Auto Refill to choose switching based on very basic filament type (regardless of color, vendor, material sub-type, etc). This is needed in order to give the user full control of the decision making for printing fully through spools of filament.
The use case is for printing with nearly empty filament rolls to functional or prototype parts where color mixing is understood and is not a concern. The current partial workaround is to manually manipulate the filament properties to incorrect values so they appear to Bambu Studio as exactly the same. This is an unnecessary burden on the user to make use of the Auto Refill capability. Also, it doesn’t appear to be a viable workaround for Bambu Lab spools that have RFID properties read by the system.
An example of a scenario;
AMS loaded with the following spools
A1 - Brand A - Red - PLA (nearly empty)
A2 - Brand B - Green - PLA Silk (nearly empty)
A3 - Bambu Filament - Blue - PLA-CF (full)
A4 - Bambu Filament - Yellow - PLA-Matte (nearly empty)
User slices the item to print with A2.
User sets the Auto Refill as follows; A2 → A4 → A1 → A3
The expected end result would be 3 fully consumed rolls and a finished printed project with 4 distinct color bands/material difference. The user would take the responsibility of accepting the color banding result and the potential layer adhesion differences between the different subtypes of PLA. If there is a concern of a novice user unintentionally mixing different filaments, the new functionality could be hidden behind an “Advanced” setting (preferred) or providing the user with a warning of the differences in filaments when selecting (much less preferred).
It’s ridiculous that we can’t do this. I’m sure it’s for the reasons you articulate about newbies but your proposed solutions to that issue are perfectly reasonable.
It looks like this is a duplicate of this request:
The name of the feature has changed from Filament Backup to Auto Refill which caused my basic search to miss the previous thread.
From the other thread, BambuLab has captured this as an internal requirement with the ID BBL001-4595. That was back in March’23 and has has not been added to BambuStudio nor has there been an update on when it will be added. @rocky.chen it would be great to get a follow-up on this.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I understand this is a possible workaround for some cases. The points I was trying to make in my feature request were;
This workaround would not work in the example I provided with 2 or more Bambu filament spools. The colors are read by the RFID and are not user modifiable (as far as I am aware).
In the situation where the workaround is possible, it is an unnecessary burden on the user. There is no technical reason to have these restrictions in software. The current implementation makes false assumptions on use cases. Bambu has already agreed with this and commented that they would add this functionality (albeit several months ago).
For me personally, before I get to the point that “I don’t care” that my end part is printed multi-colored, I might very much care. If I set up a print by object and have a handful of small parts that must be specific certain colors, followed by larger objects that I am happy to burn out the remaining roll, setting all spools to one color would be confusing when setting up the print in the slicer. My printer is remote, so I am not starring at my AMS to reference what is loaded. When you add additional AMS units, manual management gets unwieldly.
The more flexibility given to the user, the better the product and the ecosystem. I know what is best for my workflow and artificial software limitations just slows me down. If these limitations don’t affect you, then great. But expecting those it does affect to just deal with the extra jumping through hoops is myopic.
It’s a minor point, but competitive products have the capability requested. I expect Bambu to strive to be at least on par.
Yes! This!! I was printing with Black and White the other day. I knew white would run out and wanted black to finish. Nope, didn’t happen. Instead, I had to move the black roll to the white slot to get it to do anything at all. Would be nice if with the failed message you could at least select another roll that way, but again. Nope. So far, this intuitive printer isn’t very intuitive. lol.
Adding a comment as I came here and created an account so I could make this feature request.
Ideally, the software would just allow us to select what we want.
Use-cases to support the product team:
I try to use Bambu-only filament, sometimes they are out of stock and I am obligated to order another brand for the same color. I would like to keep my filament celebration settings for each filament, to the best of my knowledge the “make the settings the same” work around will not work as I will lose my filament settings.
I have multiple roles of different colors that are almost empty, I would like to be able to use them in prints where color is not important. By allowing me to set the “auto refill” flow manually I will be able to use these extra filaments.
You can turn off RFID reading and set them all manually to the same colour, I do this often as I reuse the RFID tags with generic filament. When I do want to use the filament odometer, I just hit the little circular arrow mark above the filament and then it will read the RFID tag.
Yes there are workarounds as noted previously. They require unnecessary manual interaction and have limitations depending on specific use cases. Turning off RFID reading is one way to get around the limitation of not being able to modify the Bambu filament colors directly. It’s a workaround to enable another workaround.
With that said, this request is specifically asking to enable functionality that is only restricted by SW implementation choice that limits the capability of the AMS hardware.
@rocky.chen can you please provide an update to implementation of BBL001-4595 which was mentioned 9mo ago?
