Here is my 30,000 foot view of my 3D Printer Farm network setup. Please like and subscribe: tinyurl.com/y42f4ydp for more 3D Print Farm Tips, Tricks, Reviews, Repairs, and Business-Related content!
This is one of the best 3D print farm network videos I have seen. Thank you for putting this together. This answers a lot of my questions and have pointed me in the right direction. Thank you for going into the details of speaking out hardware and network configuration.
Really enjoying the vids 👍 Got my first little farm (10 machines) setup last fall thanks to you! 🙏🏻 I’m also networked much like this minus the ups and the hubs. Fun stuff. Congratulations on your “retirement”? 🇺🇸
Good video. Finally found someone who is doing things properly. So many vids out there with people running farms but without connectivity. I'm doing things a little differently with a single server running Ubuntu controlling all the printers. This was rhe most cost effective method for me. I currently have 21 printers, but only about 17 can be controlled through octoprint. My server recently went down while i was on vacation which definitely put me out of business. I like the idea of a redundancy but I'm not going to pay the scalper price for a pi right now. The server rarely goes down like that so it was just a one off thing. I'll probably still run them through this server even if the PI prices comes down. I'm also running everything through simplyprint but realizing very quickly I do not need that paid service. Half their feature are broken anyway. Switching to octofarm and will run it on my own server or maybe a separate NAS so I can tunnel back in to control things remotely. Thanks for opening my eyes to this. My question for you, do you have any issues with having a stable connection via USB to the PIs? I used high quality cables and using a powered USB hub but connections seem to get lost randomly. The only solution is to switch to another cable. However, if I use that same cable on another printer it works fine. Any experience with this?
No stability issues, with a couple of years now in the running. The only issue I've had was with the minis; they like to freeze with successive prints over USB so I've been power cycling the printers after every print. This solved the issue completely.
@@3DPrintedDebris yeah for those of use fortunate to have a lair (barn/utility building). Sadly it is just my 3 little printers in the garage. Someday....
@@3DPrintedDebris Took it's damn time! Just been getting caught up. There well done man been enjoying them, I've also found them very informative! Thanks for the shout out for OctoFarm. I'll drop you an email through week need a catch up.
Just a few suggestions: - Do not daisy chain switches, if one goes down the rest of the line goes down too. Wire every switch back to the main one. (Btw those are not hubs, hubs are not in use since point to point networks. Those are "dumb" switches.) - Those flat Ethernet cables are really bad for longer distances (a few meters on gbe). Usually they are not proper shielded twisted pair cables, thus prone to pick up noise resulting in a lot of lost packages. The packages will be automatically re-transmitted by an upper layer (TCP, or app layer in case of UDP). Check the package loss metrics.
@@ILoveTinfoilHats 3 Years of operation, tens of thousands of prints, and not a single switch failure or network outage. You have to balance risk and cost with engineering. While your suggestion is certainly more robust, it's like using a nuke to get rid of ant hill.
@@3DPrintedDebris I noticed the same, but then I was thinking that the gcode files are small and sparse for a LAN and TCP will resend lost packages if there are issues with the network
Wow, I run a 20 printer farm, but the network is designed completely different, communicate directly to the UART board port trough ethernet, I have no problems in the last 2 years and it is really cheap
Neat! I'd love to see a video. I passed on the UART approach as it forced me to push to the SD card and there's not a lot of room for expansion. I have a library of about 1,500 prints that I sell, so it's nice getting the file and folder system inside of raspian. There's also the expandability of the Pis in that I can access UARTs, GPIO, you name it for future automation and growth.
Hi, quick question. You mentioned that the network gear in the racks are hubs. Not switches? By the time you get to the last hub hasn't the bandwidth been severely limited when compared to the units attached to the first hub in the rack? Love the content.
Thank you for so much info! You have the best channel on RUclips about 3D printer farms and business. I have about 10-12 printers and I am already networking them with Octofarm, Octopi, NAS... similar to your case. I have one question: if you have one NAS in your network, why don't you access the files in the server from each single Raspberry Pi? I think it's maybe easier to have one single source of GCODES in the network and print directly from the files in the NAS server (instead of uploading the file to each Raspberry). I am trying to implement that, and I think it is possible. Have you tried that? Thanks for your content, even if you don't have time to answer this question (I would totally understand) at least I want you to know that your videos are very helpful for me and many other people.
I looked into that, linking the upload directory to the NAS. I didn't like the idea of streaming GCODE real-time from the NAS, and I'm not sure it can support 80+ devices requesting data simultaneously. It almost reminded me of a DDOS type cyber attack.
Thanks for sharing these. What usb cable you recommend to use to connect from OctoPrint (on Pi) to each printer? There are quite a bit of SerialException out there due to bad usb cable. Thanks in advance.
Nothing special, really. I'll post links tomorrow. For the Prusa Mini, you do have to power cycle after every print or it will randomly disconnect on the 40-50th hour of print. For the MK3S, I use corning test jumpers from the pi to the Einsy GPIO.
Hi. Can u answer for one question, which one of printer better to farm and why Ender 3 or some Core XY? It’s mean a lot of slow and cheap or high price and speed
Awesome stuff, look into the new Pi Zero 2 it had the processing power as the pi3 but lower power usage and significant cost. Only issue is getting one.
@@3DPrintedDebris I'm just starting to switch to zero 2 ws, they can handle the printers no problem. Only problem you might have is if you use ethernet for everything, you need an adapter for it, so it may not be that cost effective. Granted I never fully broke down the numbers so I'm nkt too sure what would be cheaper
hey, i have a question. i have a small farm (8 printers), i built an unraid server and found octofarm as a docker app and was going to use it... so far ive had a ton of trouble and cant get the web UI to work.... i now realize the octofarm website is down, are you having trouble running your farm right now? and if youre not. is there a discord i could join for more questions?
No problems, but I code/config froze about a year ago on OctoFarm 1.5.1 and OctoPrint Buster Lite 0.17.0. It's been working so well and has been so stable I've been really reluctant to upgrade anything. If it aint broke...
@@3DPrintedDebris do you have a discord I could add or join to ask a couple more questions? I’d REALLY like my farm on octofarm. Could maybe uses a couple pointers. I appreciate your reply!
I’m hoping you might be able to help me out. I’m using OctoFarm and I’m experiencing major UI slow down and ultimately it will crash at least once every 24 hours, but as little as 2 hours. I’m currently running 20 pi’s/printers over WiFi. OctoFarm is running on 8gb pi 4. I’m working through it with James the best we can, but no luck yet. I’m not asking you to deep dive into my problem, but if you’ve experienced similar and overcome or you have some quick thoughts, perhaps a reply could save me many hours of headaches. Thanks for all the content!
I've found it's better to just wipe the SD card and start with a fresh install every 3 months. I keep a preconfigured image for fast turn, and a backup. I think there is a leak somewhere, or a log that is filling up the memory. A pm2 update helps in the short term if CPU usage spikes or memory creeps up past 1GB.
@@3DPrintedDebris Thanks for the reply. FYI, I just realized that the GitHub issue I created has been solved. Looks like the next 1.2 RC should fix it. I'm considering just diving into the Bugfix branch and running with it as is. If you are curious, the story is captured in issue #751.
@@nickdarrow4873 Thanks for the head's up. I have the exact same symptoms of performance vs. time. Hopefully James fixes it so I don't have to keep imaging SD cards. This hasn't been a priority for me as it is a commit of 1 hour per year of use.
I've been told it's solved by another user. I need to do some more testing on the issue to actually say whether it is. I've cleaned up a lot of errant websocket issues though, and put limits and other things in place like pagination for history. So fingers crossed! I'm hoping to get V1.2 out before Christmas, there's just a few UI niggles and other stuff to sort.
start at about 1 dollar per hour print time thats usually a good place, then depending on material use and difficulty and popularity, jack the price accordingly
@@3DPrintedDebris Hmm, I've got an old MacBook pro lying around. I bet I could put Chrome on that... Thank you for your videos. I'm starting my farm scale up with 2 Prusa MK3S+, a Mini+, a Creality CR-10 Smart, and an Ender 3 Belt (CR-30 clone). I've got some agreements with some merchants to produce their items under licence. I'm looking forward to more videos, especially ones concerning when and how you scaled up, and the software/process you use to analyze your business!
so the connections go from router to 16 port to what exactly another switch or to raspberry pi 3 trying to start a smaller one of my own and trying to understand
@@3DPrintedDebris i’ve watched it several times good sir😂 , so does it go from router-16 port switch- to raspberry pi 3 or 8 port switch then to raspberry pi 4
Here is my 30,000 foot view of my 3D Printer Farm network setup.
Please like and subscribe: tinyurl.com/y42f4ydp
for more 3D Print Farm Tips, Tricks, Reviews, Repairs, and Business-Related content!
This is one of the best 3D print farm network videos I have seen. Thank you for putting this together. This answers a lot of my questions and have pointed me in the right direction. Thank you for going into the details of speaking out hardware and network configuration.
Glad it was helpful!
As someone who is looking to start a small home farm, currently 16 printers, your videos are very informative
Thanks for watching!
Really enjoying the vids 👍 Got my first little farm (10 machines) setup last fall thanks to you! 🙏🏻 I’m also networked much like this minus the ups and the hubs. Fun stuff. Congratulations on your “retirement”? 🇺🇸
You're welcome! And thank you!
Good video. Finally found someone who is doing things properly. So many vids out there with people running farms but without connectivity. I'm doing things a little differently with a single server running Ubuntu controlling all the printers. This was rhe most cost effective method for me. I currently have 21 printers, but only about 17 can be controlled through octoprint. My server recently went down while i was on vacation which definitely put me out of business. I like the idea of a redundancy but I'm not going to pay the scalper price for a pi right now. The server rarely goes down like that so it was just a one off thing. I'll probably still run them through this server even if the PI prices comes down.
I'm also running everything through simplyprint but realizing very quickly I do not need that paid service. Half their feature are broken anyway. Switching to octofarm and will run it on my own server or maybe a separate NAS so I can tunnel back in to control things remotely. Thanks for opening my eyes to this.
My question for you, do you have any issues with having a stable connection via USB to the PIs? I used high quality cables and using a powered USB hub but connections seem to get lost randomly. The only solution is to switch to another cable. However, if I use that same cable on another printer it works fine. Any experience with this?
No stability issues, with a couple of years now in the running. The only issue I've had was with the minis; they like to freeze with successive prints over USB so I've been power cycling the printers after every print. This solved the issue completely.
That is an excellent point. An UPS won't run a printer for a prolong outage, but it will save your 30 hour print from power hiccups.
Or carry you long enough to switch over to backup power!
@@3DPrintedDebris yeah for those of use fortunate to have a lair (barn/utility building).
Sadly it is just my 3 little printers in the garage. Someday....
I hope you will continue to make content, I have gotten more from your videos than any other 3D printing videos!
I'll turn back to making videos here soon. For now I'm focused on profit taking.
@@3DPrintedDebris I can understand that, find you videos to be the most informing 3D Farm videos, thanks for the work in making them.
this is sick! awesome ! barbaro!!!🥳🥳🥳🥳
Thanks! It's super reliable, too. Not one SD card or Pi lost in now years of operation.
Good to see you making videos dude, hope your well!
There he is! I was wondering when this would make it to your feed. All is well!
@@3DPrintedDebris Took it's damn time! Just been getting caught up. There well done man been enjoying them, I've also found them very informative! Thanks for the shout out for OctoFarm.
I'll drop you an email through week need a catch up.
Just a few suggestions:
- Do not daisy chain switches, if one goes down the rest of the line goes down too. Wire every switch back to the main one. (Btw those are not hubs, hubs are not in use since point to point networks. Those are "dumb" switches.)
- Those flat Ethernet cables are really bad for longer distances (a few meters on gbe). Usually they are not proper shielded twisted pair cables, thus prone to pick up noise resulting in a lot of lost packages. The packages will be automatically re-transmitted by an upper layer (TCP, or app layer in case of UDP). Check the package loss metrics.
Thank you, but I prefer it my way.
@@3DPrintedDebris it's solid advice, you'll go further by listening to feedback instead of "I like it my way". Also it's U. P. S. Not "ups"
@@ILoveTinfoilHats 3 Years of operation, tens of thousands of prints, and not a single switch failure or network outage. You have to balance risk and cost with engineering. While your suggestion is certainly more robust, it's like using a nuke to get rid of ant hill.
@@3DPrintedDebris I noticed the same, but then I was thinking that the gcode files are small and sparse for a LAN and TCP will resend lost packages if there are issues with the network
Wow, I run a 20 printer farm, but the network is designed completely different, communicate directly to the UART board port trough ethernet, I have no problems in the last 2 years and it is really cheap
Neat! I'd love to see a video. I passed on the UART approach as it forced me to push to the SD card and there's not a lot of room for expansion. I have a library of about 1,500 prints that I sell, so it's nice getting the file and folder system inside of raspian. There's also the expandability of the Pis in that I can access UARTs, GPIO, you name it for future automation and growth.
Awesome setup and explanation!
Thank you sir!
Hi, quick question. You mentioned that the network gear in the racks are hubs. Not switches? By the time you get to the last hub hasn't the bandwidth been severely limited when compared to the units attached to the first hub in the rack? Love the content.
I've never noticed, that's where Octofarm's "Fire and Forget" comes into play.
So cool!
Thanks!
Thank you for so much info! You have the best channel on RUclips about 3D printer farms and business.
I have about 10-12 printers and I am already networking them with Octofarm, Octopi, NAS... similar to your case.
I have one question: if you have one NAS in your network, why don't you access the files in the server from each single Raspberry Pi? I think it's maybe easier to have one single source of GCODES in the network and print directly from the files in the NAS server (instead of uploading the file to each Raspberry). I am trying to implement that, and I think it is possible. Have you tried that?
Thanks for your content, even if you don't have time to answer this question (I would totally understand) at least I want you to know that your videos are very helpful for me and many other people.
I looked into that, linking the upload directory to the NAS. I didn't like the idea of streaming GCODE real-time from the NAS, and I'm not sure it can support 80+ devices requesting data simultaneously. It almost reminded me of a DDOS type cyber attack.
Looks good, thanks for sharing.
You're welcome!
Really love your videos thank you for sharing. What cameras are you running on your i3 and mini prusas?
Logitech C120 USB Webcams.
Thanks for sharing these. What usb cable you recommend to use to connect from OctoPrint (on Pi) to each printer? There are quite a bit of SerialException out there due to bad usb cable. Thanks in advance.
Nothing special, really. I'll post links tomorrow. For the Prusa Mini, you do have to power cycle after every print or it will randomly disconnect on the 40-50th hour of print. For the MK3S, I use corning test jumpers from the pi to the Einsy GPIO.
I put the links to the cables I use in the description. Enjoy!
Hi. Can u answer for one question, which one of printer better to farm and why Ender 3 or some Core XY? It’s mean a lot of slow and cheap or high price and speed
Got it, thanks!
Ender 3 control knob stopped working... Any advice pls.
Thanks for the video! Really helpfull!
You're welcome!
Awesome stuff, look into the new Pi Zero 2 it had the processing power as the pi3 but lower power usage and significant cost. Only issue is getting one.
Hmm.... I'll look into it. Thanks!!
@@3DPrintedDebris I'm just starting to switch to zero 2 ws, they can handle the printers no problem. Only problem you might have is if you use ethernet for everything, you need an adapter for it, so it may not be that cost effective. Granted I never fully broke down the numbers so I'm nkt too sure what would be cheaper
hey, i have a question. i have a small farm (8 printers), i built an unraid server and found octofarm as a docker app and was going to use it... so far ive had a ton of trouble and cant get the web UI to work.... i now realize the octofarm website is down, are you having trouble running your farm right now? and if youre not. is there a discord i could join for more questions?
No problems, but I code/config froze about a year ago on OctoFarm 1.5.1 and OctoPrint Buster Lite 0.17.0. It's been working so well and has been so stable I've been really reluctant to upgrade anything. If it aint broke...
@@3DPrintedDebris do you have a discord I could add or join to ask a couple more questions? I’d REALLY like my farm on octofarm. Could maybe uses a couple pointers. I appreciate your reply!
I’m hoping you might be able to help me out.
I’m using OctoFarm and I’m experiencing major UI slow down and ultimately it will crash at least once every 24 hours, but as little as 2 hours. I’m currently running 20 pi’s/printers over WiFi. OctoFarm is running on 8gb pi 4. I’m working through it with James the best we can, but no luck yet.
I’m not asking you to deep dive into my problem, but if you’ve experienced similar and overcome or you have some quick thoughts, perhaps a reply could save me many hours of headaches.
Thanks for all the content!
I've found it's better to just wipe the SD card and start with a fresh install every 3 months. I keep a preconfigured image for fast turn, and a backup. I think there is a leak somewhere, or a log that is filling up the memory. A pm2 update helps in the short term if CPU usage spikes or memory creeps up past 1GB.
@@3DPrintedDebris Thanks for the reply.
FYI, I just realized that the GitHub issue I created has been solved. Looks like the next 1.2 RC should fix it. I'm considering just diving into the Bugfix branch and running with it as is. If you are curious, the story is captured in issue #751.
@@nickdarrow4873 Thanks for the head's up. I have the exact same symptoms of performance vs. time. Hopefully James fixes it so I don't have to keep imaging SD cards. This hasn't been a priority for me as it is a commit of 1 hour per year of use.
I've been told it's solved by another user. I need to do some more testing on the issue to actually say whether it is. I've cleaned up a lot of errant websocket issues though, and put limits and other things in place like pagination for history. So fingers crossed! I'm hoping to get V1.2 out before Christmas, there's just a few UI niggles and other stuff to sort.
How do you price the prints? I just wondering if someone want's you to print a few parts, how do you go about pricing it?
That's a good idea for a video for later on! Thanks!
@@3DPrintedDebris I'm interested as well. Good video. I just got my farm set up as well.
start at about 1 dollar per hour print time thats usually a good place, then depending on material use and difficulty and popularity, jack the price accordingly
I'm interested in your "dumb terminal". What is it?
It's a cheap PC with just enough juice to host chrome and view octofarm: Cheap Computer: amzn.to/31KOphG
@@3DPrintedDebris Hmm, I've got an old MacBook pro lying around. I bet I could put Chrome on that...
Thank you for your videos. I'm starting my farm scale up with 2 Prusa MK3S+, a Mini+, a Creality CR-10 Smart, and an Ender 3 Belt (CR-30 clone). I've got some agreements with some merchants to produce their items under licence. I'm looking forward to more videos, especially ones concerning when and how you scaled up, and the software/process you use to analyze your business!
so the connections go from router to 16 port to what exactly another switch or to raspberry pi 3 trying to start a smaller one of my own and trying to understand
You'll have to watch my video again, it's in there!
@@3DPrintedDebris i’ve watched it several times good sir😂 , so does it go from router-16 port switch- to raspberry pi 3 or 8 port switch then to raspberry pi 4
@@reesemccormick429 The router, Octofarms on the Pi 4, and rack legs all connect to the switch. I partition the rack legs with hubs.
Wow that's great. My brain hurts now.
It's not that bad if you break it up into smaller tasks.