I would like to purpose a pledge Drive for an AMS system for the X1 Carbon. This is a 4 spool unit which sits on top of the printer and allows for filament drying and storage as well as automatic switching between filaments to allow for multi material and multi colour prints.
The system s currently £309 and given the interest in the machine since we have bought it, I think this is well worth the investment. I would suggest we purchase the unit and installed it once when have had time to re-arrange and move all the printers into their final home which we should be able to start at the end of this month as long as the agreement on the gorilla project is upheld.
We will need to have a discussion about how to go about deploying this. I think it includes more transparent payment for filament by members and a conversation of what should be kept available in the AMS system.
If we keep multiple colours - what colours do we stock?
If we keep multiple filaments - which ones? - is this sustainable with the given budget we have? Which is the best way of making it fair both for members and the additional workload of the techs?
Caveat/for consideration: many filaments need a controlled environment to get the best printing quality therefore keeping these in the AMS is beneficial and therefore spots should be revered for ‘house filament’.
I am actively thinking about building environmentally controlled filament storage into our area which could mitigate these issues for house filament storage.
It’s all a bit tricky, I personally want everyone to have the best experience possible in 3d printing and to mitigate the nitty gritty problems that pop up.
Can some of that workload be offloaded by training up some 3Dusers?
Will changing filament in AMS require additional training? (Or just read manual or watch a video)
Re filament, a good starting point would be to identify the various charging models that might be used and consider how those might work in practice.
One option that might be good is to have a PAYG system I.e. an initial filament charge for people who want to use the Bambu (BYO users who bought their own could opt out). A one-off charge of £10 seems reasonable. Then keep track of how much filament is used by weighing the print at the end of a job and when used £10 worth, then need to top up with another £10. If 50 users were on PAYG, that might be 20 rolls of filament which could be purchased.
The charging model drives how many filaments, how chosen etc, With PAYG, with the initial top up, PAYG users could specify 3 filaments they would like to have available (in order of preference). We could then purchase accordingly. (Maybe have e.g. black, white, red, blue, grey, green, yellow as ‘standard’ so choose colours in addition to those). There might be a separate PAYG for expensive specialist filaments with an initial top up of £20.
An easy way of weighing and logging would be needed. (Bluetooth scales?, job control?, etc.) as well as a simple backend system and someone to manage the ‘shop’ (like laser ply). There would also need to be that environment controlled storage for filament. It would give a fairly wide choice of filament and should be sustainable. It would be important to ensure users are competent in swapping filament.
PAYG is just one option. Let’s identify others and then can consider pros and cons.
