Managing multiple printers

I've been asked to look into tools that could be used to manage multiple 3D printers. This would be in an academic environment, with the idea being that we'd have a farm of perhaps 6 printers that we'd like to manage. Users would like to be able to submit print jobs remotely, and then have a dashboard that would display status on the printers. Most of the printers will be from Creality, but there are one or two others as well that may not be Creality. One of them is a printer from MakerGear and that printer came with Octoprint. There appears to be something called OctoFarm for managing multiple printers, but was wondering if there are any commonly used tools out there. Just getting pointed in the right direction would be helpful. Thanks.

Ron

well sdcards are the cheapest and simplest.

But if you want to automate things, then raspberry pi's and the 'octo' family of sofyware is probably your cheapest bet.

I suppose it's not worth telling you to not go the creality route ?

anyway - this looks promising:
https://www.astroprint.com/3d-printer-farm-software

then there's this: https://www.3dprinteros.com/3d-print...ps-operations/

Also worth a read :-)
https://help.prusa3d.com/en/article/...l-mini_133279/

That lot should get you going :-)

Hi,

And thanks for that information. Much appreciated.

As far as I can tell, they've decided to use creality printers for their "cheaper"/"lower end"/"normal use?" printers, and they just got a Makerbase dual filament printer that will be one of their "higher end" printers. I think they've gotten one creality printer in use so far, but I don't think that they've bought as many as they want yet. I don't know enough to judge whether it's a good choice or not, but it's not my choice, either. I'm just helping out.

Thanks again.

Ron

no worries

worth mentioning: https://www.amazon.co.uk/MINGDA-Prin...707135&sr=8-52

same sort of price range as the ender 3 - but with most of the essential updates already done.

Print farms seem to be a growing side of the industry so the software is only going to grow with it.