Your Prusa 3D Printer Can Finally Read OpenPrintTags – NFC Upgrade for Core One Series Printers Released
Released as a ~$20 upgrade, the OpenPrintTag NFC Upgrade sits between the spool and printer, reading tag's information, triggering automations, as well as writing material usage updates to the spool directly. And like the name suggests, it's open – it works with all your spools, Prusament or not.
How time flies. It’s been a year since Prusa introduced its OpenPrintTag NFC sticker, an open standard and physical counterpart for material tagging that the company gradually rolled out across its range of in-house filaments. Since then, things have sat still. Besides being scannable with a smartphone, there was not a lot else you could do with OpenPrintTag – certainly not the one thing you’d want to do: have your Prusa 3D printer read and recognize the filament.
That changes now with the release of the OpenPrintTag NFC Upgrade. A mount-it-yourself hardware upgrade for Core One series printers, this NFC reader enables the printer to check a spool’s tag and convey the filament color, type, and abrasiveness to the printer.
For the duration of its Black Friday sale, which appears to be live already, though the company has yet to announce it, Prusa will ship the NFC upgrade with Core One+ Gen2 and Core One L+ purchases. Beyond that, the NFC upgrade will ship as part of the standard equipment with new Core One L+ 3D printers.
The upgrade is currently only compatible with Prusa’s single-spool standard printers, not any of the company’s multiple-spool capable machines like the XL+, INDX-upgraded Core One+ printers, or MMU3-equipped MK4 or Core One printers.
In terms of performance and the new workflow the NFC reader enables, the company has shown that upon detecting an OpenPrintTag, the printer will display the type and color for confirmation, and begin preheating the hotend to the appropriate temperature for loading.
Beyond this, the printer can then rewrite the weight of material noted on the tag, subtracting print estimates for each print completed as it goes. This is a big step toward Prusa’s machines being able to connect the dots and flag things like insufficient material or, thanks to now knowing the abrasiveness of a material loaded, whether there’s a suboptimal nozzle loaded before a print commences.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that Prusa’s OpenPrintTags are indeed open. Reusing a spool after the material is used up is an option, since you can rewrite the tag to match whatever material refill you use, and buying a pack of blank tags directly from Prusa means you can tag any spools you use and your upgraded Core One printer will be able to read and detect them. The functionality completely carries over with the tag, whether it’s a spool of Prusa’s filament or not.
The Prusa OpenPrintTag NFC upgrade ($21.99) is available now from the Prusa webstore. A pack of 10 OpenPrintTag stickers costs $6.99.
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