Printers

New printer asks for a name (Workhorse, Prusa #1), the model or hardware (Prusa MK4, Bambu X1C), a Status (see Printer status), print hours so far, and notes. Power draw in watts, machine cost and lifespan in print hours sit under More details: press it to open them (it opens by itself on a printer that already has one of them). Print hours go up on their own only for a printer linked to FoxTrack Bridge (paid plans); for any other printer, update them by hand. Power draw prices electricity on quotes and in product costs; machine cost and lifespan add depreciation per print hour to both, and a lifespan of 0 skips it. With them left blank, profit leaves electricity and machine wear out. The Printers page has a Fleet view (cards) and a Live view (live status tiles for Bridge-connected printers).

The Free plan allows 1 printer and Pro 5; Farm is unlimited. At the cap, the New printer form shows the limit, what the next plan holds and that archived printers count too, instead of its fields; upgrade under Settings → Billing to add another, or delete a printer you no longer need (deleting also removes its maintenance history, see Deleting a printer).

Status, in the printer form (Edit on the printer), says whether a machine can take work: Ready, In maintenance, Offline or Retired. Set it by hand when a printer breaks down, goes in for service or leaves the fleet.

A printer linked to FoxTrack Bridge also shows what it is doing right now (Printing, for example) on its card, read from the Bridge. When the Bridge has not reported for a while, the card says Bridge offline; the printer's Status is unchanged. The Bridge does not change the status you set here, so set a repaired printer back to Ready yourself. The printer's card shows the status when it is not Ready (a Ready printer's card shows no status); the opened printer shows it in its Edit form.

In maintenance and Offline printers still appear in the printer pickers on orders and the fulfillment queue, so you can still assign work to one. The status after the name, such as Workhorse (offline), shows what you are picking. A Retired printer takes no new work: it leaves the printer pickers on orders, quotes, products, restock runs, maintenance and the fulfillment queue (a record already on it keeps it), the Print dialog no longer offers it, and a progress file import skips its name. Its maintenance schedules are never due, and it raises no Maintenance due alert.

Retired is only a status: the printer stays on the Printers page. To take it off the Printers page and the print queue as well, archive it (see Archiving a printer).

A retired or archived printer still counts toward your plan's printer cap. Deleting it frees the slot, but also deletes its maintenance schedules, service log and downtime history (see Deleting a printer). Log the repair itself on the Maintenance page.

A printer that has left the fleet (sold, broken for good) can be archived instead of deleted, so its history stays.

Open the printer, press Edit, then Archive at the foot of the form and confirm. It leaves the Printers page, the print queue and every printer picker, and its status becomes Retired. Lines that were assigned to it go back to No printer yet. A print planner plate printing on it is canceled (its units go back into the plan), and the spools checked as on it are taken off it.

Its Bridge device is unlinked, so the Bridge's prints and live status stop landing on it, and the device shows under Bridge devices to link. Prints waiting on that device to start (such as a later start from Print next plates) are canceled; a print the printer is already running is not stopped. Its print hours, maintenance log, installed hardware and past work stay.

To see archived printers, turn on Show archived on the Printers page; they show an Archived chip. Open one, press Edit, then Unarchive at the foot of the form to bring it back as Ready; lines that were on it are not put back, so assign them again, and an owner or admin links its Bridge device again with Pick a Bridge device… in its Live section. An archived printer still counts toward your plan's printer limit, and the archive confirm says so. Deleting it frees the slot but also deletes its maintenance schedules, service log and downtime history, so upgrade instead if you want to keep them. Archiving is written to the activity log.

Click a printer to open its detail view. Edit opens the same form as adding; at its foot, Duplicate makes a new printer named like the original with copy on the end, with the same model, power draw, machine cost, lifespan and notes. Print hours start at 0 and no Bridge link comes along, and the copy counts toward your printer limit. The view has these sections:

• Live: progress, time left, temperatures, the AMS, the pause, resume, stop and light buttons and the camera, when the printer is linked to a Bridge device. The Bridge device and its link menu sit at the bottom of this section. Click an AMS slot or the External spool to set its filament (see Setting the filament in an AMS slot under Integrations). After a print that FoxTrack started has ended, it asks how the print went (see Print results). A printer with no Bridge device (and not archived) shows a Pick a Bridge device… menu here when an unlinked device is waiting.
• Print queue: the open order and restock lines on this printer, the same lines the page's Print queue shows, with an Add work to this printer… picker.
• Installed hardware: titled groups such as Nozzle → 0.4mm, 0.6mm Hardened Steel.
• Notes, when the printer has any, for mods and quirks.

After a print you started from FoxTrack ends, the printer asks how it went. Answer Good, Good, print again or Failed.

The question sits under the printer's tile on the Printers page (Live view) and in the Live section of the printer's detail view. It says Print ended with the file name (and the plate number for a file with several plates), then how it ended, such as Finished after 2h 10m, Canceled or Stopped with an error, and asks you to clear the plate and say how it went. Printing a file needs Bridge (see Printing a file from FoxTrack under Integrations).

• Good records the print as good and nothing else changes.
• Good, print again records it as good, then sends the same file to the same printer with the same AMS slots in one tap, when the printer is ready. If the printer is not ready, or the slots no longer fit, the Print dialog opens with the build plate box already checked and says what needs a look. This button shows only while the file is still attached to the variant.
• Failed opens Print failed, with a row for each filament in the file. Grams lost starts from the filament's grams in the file and how much of the print time ran (a print that finished counts as all of it), so change it if you know better. Pick the Spool it came from: FoxTrack suggests one of the same material, with a close color if there is one. When the print already took grams off a spool as it ended (see Filament from the printer), the row starts on that spool, so the grams are not taken twice. For an order line, the first row starts on the line's own spool. Add a Note if you like, then press Record failed print. The grams come off the spools you picked. A row with 0 grams or no spool is left out.

When the print was started from an order line, Failed also puts the line back to the first status of your pipeline (Pending in a new workspace) and counts one failed print on it, the same as Print failed on the order page (see Recording a failed print under Fulfillment). If you already pressed Print failed on the order page for that print, nothing is recorded a second time. A failed print of a product, with no order line, shows in the activity log (Settings → Activity, for owners and admins) as Print failed.

FoxTrack does not ask about a print that was started outside FoxTrack, such as from Bambu Studio, the Bambu Handy app or the printer's screen, or about a plate printed from the print planner (the planner's own Now card has Mark done and Mark failed). Only the newest FoxTrack print on a printer is asked about, the question waits while the printer is printing, and a print nobody answered for 14 days is no longer asked about.

Work is assigned per line item: pick a printer on the line in the order form, on the card in the Fulfillment queue, or on the order's fulfillment page. From the printer's side, open the printer and use Add work to this printer… in its Print queue: pick one line, or an order's "all lines" entry to move every open line of that order at once. The x on a line takes it off the printer. The Print queue at the bottom of the Printers page groups every open line by printer, with lines that have no printer yet in a closed No printer yet group at the end. When a line reaches a finished item status its printer is freed automatically.

Live status comes from FoxTrack Bridge, a small agent that runs on your shop network and streams printer status into FoxTrack with no cloud account in the middle.

It needs Pro or Farm. Generate a Bridge token under Settings → Integrations → FoxTrack Bridge, install Bridge on a machine on the same network, and link each printer it reports on the Printers page (the Integrations, Bridge, API and webhooks topic has the steps). Bridge connects Klipper printers, Bambu Lab printers over their local MQTT connection, Prusa printers through PrusaLink, and any printer Home Assistant already knows (Bridge 2.5.1 or newer). A Home Assistant printer is read-only: FoxTrack shows its status but sends it no commands or files.

The pause, resume, stop and light buttons work from any device while the printer shows as online: the command goes through FoxTrack, Bridge picks it up within a few seconds (up to 30 seconds if you only just opened the page), and the button row shows the result. While the printer is offline the buttons and the Camera toggle are hidden, and the detail view shows when Bridge last heard from it. If Bridge stops before it picks a command up, that command expires after 2 minutes and the row says so; start Bridge and press the button again.

While a page with your printers is open, Bridge sends updates about every 10 seconds. When nobody is looking, it checks in about once a minute, and it catches up within 30 seconds of you opening the page.

FoxTrack can take filament off your spools by itself when a Bridge print ends. Open a printer on the Printers page and pick the spool in each AMS slot (the slot's spool picker), or let a Bambu Lab spool's RFID chip pick it for you. A Klipper or PrusaLink printer has one Spool row. When a Bambu spool FoxTrack does not know yet is loaded, its slot shows New spool? Add it, which opens the spool form filled in from the chip (brand, material, color, weight and what is left on it).

When a print ends, FoxTrack works out the grams from the AMS percentage before and after, from the length a Klipper printer fed, or from the print file's grams for the part that printed. A print that failed at 40 percent takes about 40 percent. The spool's stock history shows it as Print use, with the file and printer. This also covers prints you started on the printer itself, as long as the slot has a spool.

Prints started for an order line or a planner plate are skipped, because those grams are counted already. A print for a product that has an open order line or a restock run set to Printing is partly counted already: that open work took its grams when it was saved (or will at Complete). When the printer measured the print (the AMS percentage on a Bambu printer, the length a Klipper printer fed), FoxTrack books only the grams beyond what that open work already holds on the spool, so printing 11 pieces for 1 ordered piece books the extra 10. A bare estimate from the print file is still skipped for such a product, and the Print ended prompt says Counted by an open order or run. FoxTrack knows the product when the print was sent from FoxTrack, or when the file name matches one of the product's print files. A print for a product with no open work is booked in full. If you mark a print as failed, grams already taken are counted, so nothing comes off twice. Turn it off under Settings → Integrations → FoxTrack Bridge, Filament. The AMS percentage and the RFID chip need Bridge 2.5.1 or newer; older Bridges still get the print file's grams for prints FoxTrack started.

FoxTrack shows a Bridge printer's camera in two ways.

• Live picture. It streams from Bridge, so it only loads when your browser runs on the same computer as Bridge. The live tile tries it first, and the detail view has a Camera toggle for it.
• Snapshot. Everywhere else you see the latest snapshot Bridge sent, marked with how long ago it was updated. While a print is running or paused, Bridge sends one about every 30 seconds when a page with your printers is open, and about every 10 minutes when nobody is looking. An idle printer's snapshot does not change.

A live tile with neither shows no picture. Bridge can read the camera of Bambu Lab A1, A1 mini, P1P and P1S printers; X1 and H2 series cameras use a stream Bridge cannot read yet. For a Klipper printer, set the webcam URL on the printer in the Bridge dashboard: Bridge sends Klipper snapshots only when that URL is set.

Schedules and the service log live on the Maintenance page, per printer. Downtime hours logged there feed the Downtime by printer and Downtime by month reports (Pro and Farm). To show that a printer is out of action while it waits, set its Status to In maintenance or Offline (see Printer status).

Open the printer, press Edit, then Delete at the bottom of the form (owners and admins only). Deleting removes the printer with its details and installed hardware, its maintenance schedules and its service log, so its downtime leaves Reports too. Orders and products that used the printer are kept. Their lines, print queue items and print history lose the printer. It cannot be undone. To keep the printer's history and only take it out of the way, archive it instead (see Archiving a printer). If the printer is linked to a Bridge device, read Linking Bridge printers to your printers (in the Integrations topic) before you delete it.