Virtual Printers?

Walkthroughs and Instructables
1

I’m new to 3dprinter OS. I will be doing more of the admin and initial setup/enrollment of printers. I’ve not been able to find a good source of documentation regarding the virtual printer(s) options.

What are is the use case for the virtual printer option in 3dprinteros on the EasyBoxes? / When should the virtual printer options be used?

Currently we are preparing to set up 6 ultimaker extended printers with an EasyBoxe for each.
We would like to have most users just submit jobs to a single queue workgroup then have a print operator take the job and select an available printer and print the job.

So far it looks like we can have users submit to a printer the queue workgroup then a user in the print enabled workgroup can print the job to the printer selected by the submitter. Which is nice but not ideal as there maybe another printer available for the job. It appears one needs admin rights to move a job from one printer to another even if they are the same make/model/abilities.

Would/could virtual printers help here?

2

Absolutely, you can set up an Ultimaker 2 Extended Virtual Printer. This lets you send all the jobs to that printer and the ‘‘gatekeeper’’ can allocate the jobs to the relevant 3D printers.

3

How many printers can you attach/mange with an Easybox?

4

This depends on if you want to use a camera with the Easybox, because that usually requires more resources than the printer.
So camera + 3D printer = 1 Easybox
If you don’t want to use a camera, then you can use as many USB ports as you have on the PI to run all of them.