Some notes on our current 3D printing setup and where it could possibly go.

3 FDM printers (MP Select Mini v2, PS i3, MP Maker Ultimate (Wanhao D6))

SLA printer already has its own web interface- tends to change IP address on occasion,

One Pi 3 has been set up for Octoprint (via Octopi) connected to the Ultimate for now. Have a workflow going with Cura→ printer through Octoprint that seems decent.

Unfortunately, Octoprint only really directly supports one printer at a time (kind of lame, but I understand their reasons…)

Proposal:

• PC running Linux w/a bit of RAM/CPU (Rack server could do this, but the USB cable routing gets hairy)
  • We could probably do this with a Pi 4 if we forgo > 1 camera (we're not using any at the moment…)
• Use Udev to uniquely identify each printer's serial port (and webcam if we add those in…)
• Run Dockerized (podman-ized?) instances of Octoprint, each running on its own port, connected to its own Printer/Webcam/Storage Directory
  • https://hub.docker.com/r/octoprint/octoprint
• HAProxy to provide port 80/443? routing to instances by directory
• This covers the udev & HAProxy parts: https://back7.co/home/scaling-octoprint-with-a-raspberry-pi
• Scaling up just involves adding config to udev/container setup/HAProxy
• Add in OctoFarm for overview of everything? https://octofarm.net/

We've actually done a fair bit of this - see Octoprint for more details.