Prusa Open Sources a Solution for Smart Filament Tagging

I'm pretty excited about this because it's one of the cornerstones of why BambuLabs printers are so easy to use. One of the main issues in the past has been tuning your printer to use a certain type of filament; it has more options than a 1999 JVM. With BL printers and filaments you can just slap it on and the printer is automatically configured to optimal print you object.

Now, I can see why BL would not be excited about this. One reason I purchase so much BL filament is because it's so easy to use. Every time I've gone "off-script" and gotten a reel from another maker I have to do the work of configuring it to get the most out of the filament. It's not super hard, it's just really inconvenient. So, of course BL would like me to continue purchasing their filament and would not want to join this movement.

However, BL doesn't produce all types filaments in all necessary colors for everyone. Once (if) everyone else moves to this standard then BL is out in the dark, getting left behind. Orca slicer can be configured to use this new standard and is also compatible with my A1. I'm planning on my next printer being a BL H2? but if that day comes and all the other printers are supporting the new standard my plans will probably change. I think that it would be in BL's best interest to support the new standard, now and in the future.

BTW: one handy way to use up the remnants of an almost empty roll is to make the printer think that it's a different color. Start printing some utility object (where the color doesn't matter) with the almost empty roll and then have the printer automatically switch to the new roll of the correct color. This works pretty well, but it involves you forceably ripping the RFID tags out of the old roll, which is not super fun. It would be great if we could you reprogram the old roll to match the new roll and get on with printing.