🖨️ Connecting printers
Connecting a printer to BolloPrint means telling it how to reach the machine. From then on the workshop sees its live status, and every print is recorded with its duration, its material and its cost without anyone writing it down by hand.
It's done from Settings → Printers, and only Admins and Owners can do it.
There are two ways to reach a printer
| ☁️ Through the cloud | 🔌 Over your local network | |
|---|---|---|
| How it travels | Through the manufacturer's cloud | Over your own network, with the local agent |
| What you have to install | Nothing | The agent (a program that runs on a computer in the workshop) |
| Brands | Bambu Lab only | Bambu Lab, Prusa, Elegoo, FlashForge, QIDI, Sovol, Voron, Creality K1 with Moonraker… (see Compatible printers) |
| What you can do | Look only | Look and, depending on the machine, pause, resume and cancel (not Bambu machines) |
| Camera | No | Yes, on the printers that have one: a photo every few minutes while printing, and another one right away when you ask for it |
| If the internet goes down | The status is lost | The agent keeps reading and tells you everything when it comes back |
You don't have to pick one for the whole workshop. You can have some machines through the cloud and others over the local network, and change your mind later.
💡 Which one suits you?
If you only have Bambu Lab machines and you want to see their status without installing anything, start with the cloud: it takes five minutes. If you have machines from other brands or you want a camera, you need the local agent. To be able to cancel a print from BolloPrint you also need the agent, plus a machine that allows it: Bambu machines don't allow it by any route.
The three tabs of the panel
Settings → Printers has three tabs:
- Printers — the list of all your machines, however they connect: their status, which route they come through (the agent that drives them, Bambu Cloud or both) and the active/inactive switch.
- Local agent — your agents and the printers they've found on your network. Each agent opens in a window with its status, its printers and its deployment. This is the local network route.
- Bambu Cloud — connecting your manufacturer account. This is the cloud route.
Above the tabs you'll see the notices that need you to do something, each with a button that takes you to where it gets sorted out.
Active or inactive: what counts towards your plan
Your plan includes a number of active printers. In the Printers tab you see the counter (for example 4 / 6 active) and you can switch off the ones you don't use with their switch.
- An inactive printer doesn't count towards the limit and we don't connect to it. It stays in the list, with its name and its whole history.
- What's counted is the machine, not the way of reaching it: the same printer seen through the cloud and through the agent takes up a single slot.
- If you connect a whole fleet at once and there aren't slots for all of them, the extras come in disabled rather than breaking your plan. You choose which ones to switch on.
The same printer over both routes
A Bambu Lab machine can be connected through the cloud and through the local agent at the same time. If the agent finds a machine on your network that you already had in the cloud, it tells you ("It's "P1S-02", which you already have through Bambu Cloud") and the button is Also connect over LAN: BolloPrint recognizes it by its serial number and adds the local route to it, without removing the cloud one:
- it's still a single printer, with its number, its name and its whole history;
- it takes up a single slot in your plan;
- both routes stay connected; while the local one works, the live status comes from it.
There's nothing to confirm and nothing to unify by hand.
How a printer is identified
Each machine is recognized by its serial number, never by its IP address. That's deliberate: if the router changes its address, it's still the same printer and it doesn't lose a single line of its history.
That's why, when you disconnect a printer and connect it again later — even if it has moved place, network or access code — it comes back exactly as it was.
What BolloPrint does NOT do with your printers
It's worth saying early on so you don't go looking for a button that isn't there:
- We don't send jobs to print. The file is still sent from your slicer. BolloPrint reads what the machine is doing and records it.
- We don't change printer settings (temperatures, speeds, calibrations).
- The only thing you can ask a machine to do is pause, resume or cancel, and only when it's connected over the local network with full control. And, if it has a camera, a photo: that only looks at it, it doesn't touch it.
Carry on here
- ☁️ Cloud printers — connecting your Bambu Lab account.
- 🔌 Local network printers — the agent and the machines it manages.
- 🔗 Connection types — what you can do with each connection type and what its limits are.
- 🖨️ Compatible printers — every manufacturer and model, and whether they can be connected.