Print queue - Use 'ready' printers first#856

Minor thing but I noticed SimplyPrint will send a job to the first matching printer, in my case this means the left-most printers and it’ll do a print eject cycle and dump the plate, instead of using the next printer along which has a clear bed and has been marked as ‘ready’

Could an option be added so it will first check for any printers that are in the ‘Ready’ state, then follow normal rules of position

We do only send prints to Ready printer, so I’m not quite sure what you mean - can you elaborate? For printer matching we indeed always show the match status for all printers in all states, but we wouldn’t try and send a print to a printer that is busy of offline

I use swapmod and autoprint, when a part is finished the print status is at 100% and will wait there until a new job comes in. I don’t know what you would call this state but lets refer to it as “Finished” which lets it accept new jobs but it will have to run the part ejection sequence. I can however manually click ‘Print Removed’ which skips the print ejection sequence. I do this when i’ve manually gone and removed parts, cleaned the plate etc. I would call this state “Ready”

So lets say I have printers 1 and 2 and they’ve finished a part hours ago, parts are on the bed. I go over and clean printer 2 so now it has an empty bed ready to go, printer1 still has parts on it. I’ve clicked ‘Print Removed’ on printer2. I would expect the next job I send to the print queue to start on printer2, but instead it starts on printer1. Thus printer1 has to run through the part ejection sequence, it would make more sense to have it start on printer2 since its ‘Ready’ to go, printer1 is not it still has to run the ejection sequence

Does this make sense?

Right, so you suggest that there should be an option to prefer printers that are fully cleared and not printers that are awaiting clearing but have AutoPrint enabled? Thereby having the next print start on a fully clear printer rather than one that has to clear first? If so, mind elaborating a little bit more on why? I can kind of see that it will often be better, or at least sometimes be better, to clear the bed manually as there will be fewer steps in an automated process that can potentially fail; the next print will start faster if it’s on an already cleared bed. Usually we would say that an AutoPrint-enabled printer with a non-cleared bed is as good as a fully cleared bed.

At some point i’ve gone and made sure that printer is truly ready, whether it be changing out filament, maintenance, clearing that specific bed, whatever and then marked it as Ready. It just seems more logical in how it should operate. and yes it saves a few minutes in the next job

I don’t always have my printers constantly running. Last print as an example i’m prototyping, bed on printer1 is full of small clips, when it ejects they all get dumped in a bin. This is ofc fine for production, but for inspection and assembling with PartB I’d rather they all stay on the bed for now