Printers & Work Centers¶

Manage your physical print fleet and the logical production areas that schedule work across it.

What You'll Learn¶

• How the Printers page and Work Centers & Routings page relate to each other
• How to add, configure, and test printers in FilaOps
• How to discover networked printers automatically, including from a Docker-hosted install
• How to bulk-import a fleet from CSV
• How to track maintenance history and schedule planned downtime
• How to create work centers and assign printers to them for production scheduling

Two Separate Pages¶

FilaOps keeps printer management and production scheduling in two dedicated screens:

Printers and work centers are connected: you can assign a printer to a Machine Pool work center. When you do, the printer appears in scheduling and the active-work view on each printer card.

The Printers Page¶

Navigate to Operations > Printers in the sidebar.

The page has four tabs across the top:

• All Printers — Your complete fleet with a live count badge
• Maintenance — History table plus the orange overdue-count badge when service is past due
• Network Discovery — Find printers by IP probe or SSDP/mDNS scan
• CSV Import — Bulk-add printers from a CSV text block

Reading a Printer Card¶

Each card in the All Printers tab displays:

• Name and Code (your internal identifier)
• Status badge — color-coded current state:

• Brand and Model
• IP address (when configured)
• Location
• Capability badges — AMS (multi-material slots detected), Camera, Enclosure
• Active work panel — shown when the printer's work center has a running or queued production order operation. Displays the production order code, product name, quantities completed vs. ordered, and queue depth.

FilaOps polls for active work every 30 seconds and updates cards automatically — no manual refresh needed.

Filtering the Fleet¶

Above the card grid, three controls narrow which printers appear:

• Search field — matches name, code, model, or location (press Enter to apply)
• All Brands dropdown — filter to a specific brand
• All Status dropdown — filter to offline, idle, printing, or error

Adding a Printer¶

Step 1. Click Add Printer (top-right of the page).

Step 2. Fill in the form:

Step 3. Click Add Printer to save.

Testing a Connection¶

Click Test on any printer card to verify FilaOps can reach that printer's IP address. The button is grayed out when no IP address is configured.

To test every printer with an IP address at once, click Test All in the top-right header area. A successful test updates the printer's status to idle and reports the response time.

Network Discovery¶

The Network Discovery tab provides two complementary tools for finding printers without typing IP addresses manually.

Find Printer by IP (Recommended for Docker)¶

The Find Printer by IP section probes a single IP address directly. It checks common printer ports — 8883 (Bambu Lab MQTT), 7125 (Klipper/Moonraker), 5000 (OctoPrint), 80/443 (HTTP/HTTPS) — and reports what it finds.

Step 1. Enter the printer's IP address in the field.

Step 2. Click Probe (or press Enter).

Step 3. If a printer is detected and not yet registered, it is added to the discovered list below. Click Add to Fleet to register it.

Network Scan (SSDP/mDNS)¶

The Network Scan section triggers an automatic discovery sweep using SSDP on port 1990 (Bambu Lab) and mDNS. It finds printers that broadcast their presence on the local network.

Step 1. Click Try Network Scan.

Step 2. Wait up to 10 seconds for the scan to complete.

Step 3. Review the discovered printer cards. Each shows brand, model, IP address, and serial number. Click Add to Fleet to register any printer not already registered (printers already in your fleet show a green "Already registered" indicator instead of the Add button).

CSV Import¶

To add a large fleet at once, use the CSV Import tab. Paste your CSV data directly into the text area rather than uploading a file.

Format¶

Your CSV must include a header row. The required columns are code, name, and model. All other columns are optional:

code,name,model,brand,serial_number,ip_address,location,notes

Example rows:

PRT-001,X1C-Bay1,X1 Carbon,bambulab,ABC123,192.168.1.100,Farm A,Bay 1
PRT-002,P1S-Bay2,P1S,bambulab,DEF456,192.168.1.101,Farm A,Bay 2
PRT-003,Generic-01,Ender 3 V2,generic,,192.168.1.102,Farm B,

Valid values for brand: bambulab, generic. Other values are accepted but silently converted to generic on a Core install.

Duplicate codes are skipped by default — rows where the code already exists in FilaOps are counted as "Skipped" and do not produce errors.

Running an Import¶

Step 1. Click Add Header Row to seed the text area with a header line, then paste your printer rows below it — or paste your complete CSV (including the header) directly.

Step 2. Click Import Printers.

Step 3. Review the result panel: Imported (green), Skipped (yellow), and Errors (red). Error entries show the row number and the reason.

Maintenance Tracking¶

The Maintenance tab consolidates all maintenance history and lets you log completed work or schedule future downtime windows.

When any printer is overdue for maintenance, the Maintenance tab shows an orange badge with the count.

Maintenance Due Summary¶

If maintenance is overdue or due within the next 14 days, an orange alert panel appears at the top of the tab showing:

• Overdue count (red number)
• Due in 14 days count (yellow number)
• Up to 5 printers listed by name and code, with days overdue or days remaining

Logging Completed Maintenance¶

Step 1. Click Log Maintenance (the orange button, top-right of the Maintenance tab).

Step 2. On the Log Maintenance tab of the modal, fill in:

Step 3. Click Log Maintenance.

The history table below shows all logged events with columns: Date, Printer, Type (color-coded badge), Description, Cost, and Downtime.

Scheduling a Maintenance Window¶

A maintenance window blocks the scheduler from assigning new operations to a printer's work center during planned downtime.

Step 1. Click Schedule Window (the outlined orange button) on the Maintenance tab, or switch to the Schedule Window tab inside the maintenance modal.

Step 2. Select the printer, enter Start and End date/times, and optionally add a reason.

Step 3. Click Schedule Window.

Upcoming windows are listed below the form. Use Cancel to remove a future window, or Complete to mark it done — completing a window automatically writes a maintenance log entry.

Work Centers & Routings¶

Navigate to Operations > Work Centers & Routings in the sidebar.

This page has two tabs: Work Centers and Routings.

What Is a Work Center?¶

A work center is a logical production area. Production order operations are scheduled to a work center, not to individual machines. Within a work center of type Machine Pool, individual machines are tracked as resources.

Common examples for a 3D print farm:

• FDM-POOL — Machine Pool containing all FDM printers
• POST-PRINT — Work Station for support removal and finishing
• QC — Work Station for quality inspection
• SHIP — Work Station for packing and shipping

Work Center Types¶

Adding a Work Center¶

Step 1. Click Add Work Center.

Step 2. Fill in the form:

Identity

• Code (required) — short uppercase identifier, e.g. FDM-POOL
• Type — Machine Pool, Work Station, or Labor Pool
• Name (required) — descriptive name, e.g. FDM Printer Pool
• Description — optional notes

Capacity

• Hours/Day — hours per day this work center is available
• Units/Hour — throughput rate used in capacity planning

Hourly Rates ($)

Three rate components combine into the total rate used for job costing on production orders:

• Machine — machine depreciation or lease cost per hour
• Labor — operator labor rate per hour
• Overhead — utilities, facility costs per hour

Click Calculate next to the Overhead field to open the built-in overhead rate calculator. Enter printer purchase cost, expected lifespan, hours/day, days/year, electricity rate, wattage, and annual maintenance budget. The calculator derives a suggested overhead rate; click Apply Rate to transfer it to the field.

Scheduling

• Priority (0–100) — lower numbers are scheduled first when multiple work centers could fulfill an operation
• Bottleneck checkbox — marks this work center as the throughput constraint
• Active checkbox — inactive work centers are hidden from scheduling dropdowns

Step 3. Click Create Work Center.

Adding Resources (Individual Machines)¶

For Machine Pool work centers, you can track individual machines as resources so the scheduler can record which specific printer handled each operation.

Step 1. Expand a Machine Pool card and click + Add Resource.

Step 2. If printers have already been assigned to this work center (via the Machine Pool field in the printer form), a Quick Add from Assigned Printer dropdown appears. Selecting a printer auto-fills the resource form with the printer's code, name, model, serial number, and IP address.

Otherwise, fill in the fields manually:

Step 3. Click Add Resource.

Routings¶

The Routings tab lists all production routings — ordered sequences of operations that define how a product is made and how long it takes.

Each row shows:

Click Edit to open the routing editor where you can add, reorder, and configure individual operations, their work centers, time values, and required materials.

Click Create Routing to start a new routing from scratch.

Tips & Best Practices¶

• Use meaningful names and locations — X1C Bay 3 - Left Rack is far more useful than Printer 3 when troubleshooting across a large farm.
• Set static IPs or DHCP reservations — changing DHCP addresses break connection testing and active-work polling. Reserve IPs at your router or configure static addresses on the printers.
• Assign printers to a Machine Pool — this enables the active-work panel on each printer card and makes printers visible to the scheduler.
• Set hourly rates on work centers — accurate machine, labor, and overhead rates are the foundation of reliable job costing in production orders.
• Mark your bottleneck work center — the Bottleneck flag signals which station limits your throughput and should be prioritized in scheduling.
• Log every maintenance event — even quick fixes. The history table reveals which printers cost the most to maintain over time.
• Always fill in Next Due when logging — this drives the overdue badge so problems surface before a failure occurs mid-print.
• Schedule maintenance windows before taking a printer offline — this prevents the scheduler from assigning work during the downtime.
• Use the IP probe on Docker installs — the SSDP network scan does not cross Docker network boundaries; the IP probe always works.

What's Next?¶

With printers configured and linked to work centers, put them to work:

• Running Production — create and release production orders that schedule operations to your work centers
• Bill of Materials — define product BOMs and attach routings for accurate job costing
• Material Planning (MRP) — plan material needs based on your production schedule
• Tracking Inventory — track filament spools and raw material stock

Quick Reference¶