JJ Shankles: Welcome to another episode of the Co Extrusion Podcast. Hey Jerry, how's it going? Jerry Gomes: Hey, I'm doing good. How are you? JJ Shankles: Doing good, yeah. So this week I think we should talk about the new piece of software that's out for three D printing. I don't know if anyone's seen the YouTube video by YGK three D, but his new watchtower software. I think we were both beta testers that we saw it early on, seeing testing it out. In Jerry Gomes: Yes. JJ Shankles: initial thoughts. Jerry Gomes: okay, so I saw about what I I learned about Watch Tower a couple months ago, maybe three months JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: ago. I was offered to be a beta tester and I didn't actually accept it 'cause I wasn't t I wasn't printing with tons and tons of printers. However, I did just get access to the beta a couple days ago, maybe three or four days ago. And I JJ Shankles: Okay, yeah. Jerry Gomes: have been I have been using it, I've been integrating with it and it's Insanely powerful, like super, super powerful. JJ Shankles: Yeah. I was interested with you do more I feel like batch printing, the like those things you sell. it's an interesting tool that I think is useful for most people. Like it's one of those like even I don't know, my scale of printing it goes up and down. I'll be like one week I'll have all of my printers running, doing all a bunch of printing, and then a few weeks of just like barely turning a printer on. so it's kind of up and down. But even for me I think it's really useful as a tool. Like, So maybe first we should start with what it is. Jerry Gomes: Yeah. JJ Shankles: start from the beginning for anyone who hasn't seen that video. Watchtower is and I've been thinking of a way to describe it. It's kind of an in-between tool between your slicing software and the actual printing software, like the actual printer. It's this in between layer. Jerry Gomes: Yes. So I don't wanna like take the words from Taylor and and twist them and and make wrong. However, I believe the intent is to be some kind it's it's printer management software. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: I I don't wanna go so far as to say print farm management software because you don't have to actually have a print farm. Taylor or YGK three D suggests that well y you could use the software with as few as like Well, I guess you could use it with just a single printer. I don't know why you would, but you could use it with as few as three printers. If you've only got three, you could still make great value out great use JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: out of it. but if you've got five or ten printers, like maybe ten might be a little extreme, but for like the layman, like you know, maybe someone watching, five JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: printers is shockingly not uncommon and JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: difficult to manage with just one person. JJ Shankles: Yeah. I think Jerry Gomes: What if you have a cheaty machine, two Crealities and two bamboos? It starts JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: the more brands like if you can have some way to make all of your printers cohesive, starts JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: to help out. JJ Shankles: Yeah. I do think even though even with a single printer, it can genuinely be useful because it is this like print management. So it's that step between the two. And a lot of times I will sit down at the computer and have great ideas. I get all my ideas to start the week and I'm like, I want to print this and this and this. and so you go to your slicer and slice them up and then I can send them in to it has a queue system. And so send them into Watchtowers queue for whatever printer I want them to send to. And then throughout the week I can just finish a print and start whatever's next in the queue or rearrange them in the queue. if I change my mind of like, I really want that to print today and this will print tomorrow and rearranging things. But even though I am printing a pretty low volume on one one or two printers usually, it's like, it's actually good to like have your your idea setting. and put them all in the queue and that way it's not like ten o'clock at night and I come down here and I take a print off the printer and then I'm like, okay, now I gotta go back to the slicer to send the next file over if I forgot to send one correctly or if I need to tweak something. Like it's it's kind of this management. It it takes your thoughts between idea to getting them ready to go to the printer. Jerry Gomes: Yeah, for instance, if you've got six build plates for a particular project, you JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: can queue up all the build well, so correct me where I'm wrong, because I haven't used it as long, but you can queue up all the print files and you can JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: have it intelligently send to the appropriate printers, correct? JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. Jerry Gomes: Or you can queue up specifically for this printer, and then JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: when that print is done, you've removed the parts, you just tell it to continue, and then it continues with the next one in the queue, correct? JJ Shankles: Yes, you have to go into Watchtower and mark as mark that printer as ready for the next one and then it picks up any available cued print that it's ready to do. Which can be really powerful if you have s an AMS with a bunch of colors and your next print is in black filament, but you ran out of black filament. If you mark the printer as ready, it'll skip that one and do the next one that has a red filament because you do have red filament loaded in there. Jerry Gomes: Yeah. What what I can say, JJ Shankles: That's super cool. Jerry Gomes: this is very, very valuable to someone like me. Because now again, I have I've only had access to it for a couple days, so I know what it's JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: capable of generally, but I haven't tested it myself I tested it out fully. But this is powerful for like when I was building the 3D printable board game storage. Like I talk about this thing so much and it was like the bane of my existence. But when I was printing JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: the th the the Board game storage shelf. It was like 50 kilograms of filament. I took this modular system to the absolute extreme, right? I made it nine feet tall. I made it five feet wide and three feet deep. It was never should have been that. But I aggregated all of the files that I needed to print. So for instance, I'm just gonna say part A, I needed 16 of part A, 18 of part B, what all of them were printed in the same filament material. The same JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: material, the same color. Well, there was two colors, right? Probably 70% of it was one color, 30% was another color. But I was printing these on Creality machines of similar build plate sizes. I was printing JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: or ex especial specifically of like similar extruders and stuff. So I could probably just send the same file to the K2 Plus, the K2 Plus and the K1Cs. But anyway. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: All on Creality Machines, all on Flash Forge machines, and all on bamboo machines. I was running like 16 printers or something at once across the JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: house. And the way that I was managing which files needed to be printed was I literally calculated it out and I wrote it on the spools of filament. This spool of filament JJ Shankles: wow. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: needed to print two of this, one of this, three of this. That was the only way I could maintain like the the 250 parts I needed to print. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: This would have solved all my problems. JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. And it's and that's an extreme example, but yeah, it's totally that. You can get it all in your head at one minute and you're like, Cool, I have it ready to go. This is how many of everything But then a day later when it's late at night and you take you're taking prints off of the build plate and you're like Wait, have I printed four or seven of these parts? And these parts in my hand, I can't really tell them apart because they're just mirrored edges to each other. Like, you know, those types of prints where you're Jerry Gomes: Yeah. yeah. JJ Shankles: like, wait, is this the front back left corner or the back front right corner? Like and yeah, Jerry Gomes: Yeah. JJ Shankles: the software is like, cool. No, you set out a plan at one time, and we're just gonna follow that plan. You can adjust it as you go, but it's like here's your plan listed out in a software. Jerry Gomes: No, it it's it's it's like the queuing is glorious. Actually, the queuing feature is a feature that exists in Hey Gears 3D printers, or JJ Shankles: Hmm. Jerry Gomes: maybe not queuing specifically, but grouping. I think maybe you can do grouping with Clipper in general, but it's a little convoluted. But JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: grouping of prints is something that I first experienced on a Hagears printer, which resin and not compatible, I don't believe, with with this system, but JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: or with Watchtower, but the concept is still the same, right? When you have a lot of build plates that you need to print, how do you keep it organized? You like, JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: there's a good chance that a lot of people watching this video now maybe haven't taken on a project that big. So you haven't quite experienced it. But what if you just like as JJ as you said, like You just you want to print a benchy in this color, a benchy in that color, and you wanna go print this figure and that figure. And you just wanna cue them all up now. This way, when you wake up in the morning to go to work, you remove the part, you s you click printer ready, and then you leave for work. You don't have to re slice, resend, anything. You just you just say it's ready to go and you've already done all the, you know, tedious work. You've already sliced JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: the file. You don't have to reopen the slicer and do it all over again. JJ Shankles: And the I've done the where you do you do have multiple build plates and you can say slice all build plates and then send all build plates for some printers who have nice screens on it. And so then in your print files there's corda kind of a folder you can open and then it'll be all of those different files. And then yeah, it's you take one part off and then you're like, Well, okay, now that was part number three, so I need to click right this many times to make sure I'm printing file number four. There's not this like Q that's like, No, you printed file three, go on to four. Like don't reprint one that you've already done before. Jerry Gomes: Well, yeah, and so what you're suggesting is kind of what I thought was possible, but so like in the Hage Gears machines, you can actually you can actually like I'm pretty sure you can actually set it to like file complete. Like there actually is a queue in the Hagears JJ Shankles: Yes. Jerry Gomes: machines, but on Clipper based FDM printers, you can send a grouping of files, but why do you do that? You do that because you have a project which might be three build plates with like ten parts on each. Well JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: When you look at this when you look at build plate A and it's got ten parts, and you look at build plate B and it's got ten parts, and then one of them failed, and then you gotta remember which build plate failed, which one do I still need to print, and which one have I already printed. Now, or what if only four parts on the build plate failed, but you don't know which four parts. Now you gotta go back in and figure out which build plate to like partly reprint. I got just a JJ Shankles: Yeah. Yeah, Hey Gears is one where the queuing system is really nice on Hey Gears, where on like the f main front page it shows all of the files that you've sent to the printer but not printed yet. Which is super nice to be like once you click one and start print, it goes off of that queue. So now when you come back that queue isn't four files long, it's only three files long. And after you print Jerry Gomes: Mm-hmm. JJ Shankles: one, it goes down to two. I do wish if a print failed it would stay on the queue. That's my one downside to how Hey Gears does it. Like when a print fails, or even just an error, if you start a print but there is something on the build plate, so it errors out, you then have to go back into your print history. Or there's somewhere in the printer you can go back and redo that one. it's not that big of an issue, but it's nice to have. But on Clipper Machines, there's not that like here's the new files that you haven't printed before. But Watchtower kind of gives you that Jerry Gomes: Mm-hmm. JJ Shankles: as well. Jerry Gomes: So yeah, so to kind of touch on what you were saying before, because I haven't like had this issue. If you have a queue of parts and one of them fails, what like what do you do in Watchtower so that Watchtower handles it appropriately? Do you just have to re-add that to the queue? Or JJ Shankles: Mm. Jerry Gomes: is there like a pop-up that says part or print was successful? Or what what's the protocol for that? JJ Shankles: Yeah, so I haven't actually had a print fail inside of Watchtower. But there is a section for completed prints. So you could and maybe Jerry Gomes: I guess JJ Shankles: Here paused and failed prints. Yeah, so you can go back to failed prints if one is messing up and you Jerry Gomes: So you just market failed. That's you market failed and then it like recycles itself onto the queue. JJ Shankles: I think it goes like if a print is failing and on the printer you say cancel print, you clear off the build plate and then in Watchtower it'll go down under your failed print section. So you'd have to go down to that failed print section to redo it, I think. Jerry Gomes: That's fair. But certainly certainly I I guess I I I guess we haven't really experienced that side of Watchtower, but certainly the intent of it is printer management. So JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: like if the and it's I it's still in beta. It's in like beta four or beta three. I think it's beta three right now. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: So there's still gonna be more more features that that are that JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: are gonna be added to it. But I mean, it's an incredibly powerful tool because I'm trying to think right, like if you have all Creality machines, Creality Slicer is pretty freaking good. Actually, I JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: feel like it got worse because you used to be able to send to multiple different printers at the same time, and now you can't do that anymore. So like I don't really JJ Shankles: interesting. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: know why, or maybe I'm just blind, but creality slicer I still feel like is king of slicing. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: But yeah, I mean people that have multiple different brands of printers, like You have to open up like you ha if you want to control your bamboo versus your corality, you have to open up the respective slicers or the app on your phone. And JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: don't get me wrong, like well, this this actually might turn into a into a use case where you download Orca Slicer and you use Orca Slicer for everything. And then you JJ Shankles: Mm. Jerry Gomes: set up a virtual printer in Orca Slicer. You send your part from Orca Slicer to a virtual printer, which is Watchtower. And then at that point, once it's in watchtower, you can sort it and organize it for particular the vr the correct respective printer, whatever I JJ Shankles: Yeah. Or those you set up virtual printers for each printer. So you send it to Jerry Gomes: Sure, yeah. JJ Shankles: at least it that's with my I have a lot of bamboo lab printers there, and so it's like my virtual H two D is actually Watchtower. So I tell it to send it to that H two D and it really just goes into my watchtower queue of things. Jerry Gomes: For the actual H2D. JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. Jerry Gomes: Yeah, so fair. But so like in Orcasli like the reason I'm thinking is like in Orca Slicer now, or I guess that you could use Bamboo Slicer if you want to just import your crowddy printers, but at that JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: point, you could have one slicer to JJ Shankles: One slicer, yeah. Jerry Gomes: to just send everything to, because right now I have to use bamboo slicer to send the bamboo. And JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: I don't have to use I like I want to use Crawley Slicer for the Crawley Machines. But JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: if I could have some kind of a software to manage everything, it would be nice to start to consolidate and put every like at that point, JJ Shankles: Hm. Jerry Gomes: it's worth consolidating slicers to just one that can work with everyone. So JJ Shankles: Yeah, that could be. I still like using the manufacturer slicers, but then having this aggregates it together of like I do open Jerry Gomes: Sure. JJ Shankles: all the slicers, but then I send them all to one place and then from Watchtower, being able to monitor all of them is so cool to be able to open and it's like, cool, my even if you only have like two printers going at one time, it's like cool, the little videos pop up and you can see both printers going at the same time and you're like, Cool, here's my Creality Jerry Gomes: yeah. JJ Shankles: printers, here's my bamboo printers. yeah. Jerry Gomes: That that is all that is another good point. Like you might take or maybe not take for you might not realize how valuable it is to see every s the camera of every single printer on one single screen, which JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: is not cla well like for bamboo, if I wanna see the camera, I have to select the printer and then tell it to turn the feed on. And then JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: I if I want to see the other camera, I to go to that camera to that printer and tell it turn the feed on. And say it's the same with Creality. You have to select the individual printer. Now you just go to your printers, and I see like 16 printers that are powered on. All of them, all the cameras on a single, a single screen quickly tells JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: me if a print has failed, like if any of the however many printers going five, six, seven have failed. And if so, which one to walk to. JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: that's another thing. You can group the printers too, which JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: Sounds stupid, like, what is that gonna do you? But like I have a group of printers for my print studio, I have a group of printers for the live stream room, I have group of printers for my office, 'cause I have printers JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: in different areas. JJ Shankles: Your different area printers. super all of these little things that I feel like he's just really worked out well. Cause I've been in the beta since the initial one and I haven't had any issues. I feel bad where I need to message him to be like, I just haven't run into any issues like for my use case. Like I'm not a power user really trying to do all these different things. Like initially there was some issues in the first one of it. wasn't re up restarting it was an issue or something. But that's like a basic he made it for Mac and Windows, the beta version one had a bit of issues with Window with PCs. but yeah, now it's just been for my use case has been rock solid. Jerry Gomes: yeah. JJ Shankles: I think the filament management side of things is a whole nother super powerful tool that I really want to dive into. Of how much it basically catalogs all of your filaments and whatever filaments are loaded on your printers. So whether your Bamboo Lab printers detect the RFID you or you manually put them onto any different printer, it sort of creates a virtual ID tag for it. and then it I'm trying to explain how How powerful this is of like when you move one, say you take a filament out of your H2D and put it in the P2S. in the software, you can tell it, hey, this is the same spool moved for moved from here to there. Jerry Gomes: Mm. JJ Shankles: you can also print out QR codes was another way. You can print out a sheet of QR codes. And so in the app, you can say, here's a new spool, scan the QR code, put it on that. that box of filament that you just got in. And so then the next time you need you put that spool somewhere, you scan the QR code, put it on the printer, and then Watchtower knows where your filaments are. Jerry Gomes: I think the so I have not die I have not dove dived. I haven't I haven't gotten into the filament management on Watchtower JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: at all yet. So I don't know any capabilities, but I would say that one issue with filament management right now is JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: that when specif and I think it all comes back to this, but when you're working with different slicers and different brands of printers and printers in different areas. of your studio or your house and different like it becomes a mess, especially JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: if it's like failed prints. Like if you have a failed print on now, I don't know how Watchtower handles failed prints and how much filament was used. Don't know JJ Shankles: Hmm. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: that. But what I do know is if you have a failed print on a bamboo machine and you move that spool and ha and then put it in a crowding machine, like there's no software that exists right now. To easily track all of that because JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: I'm sure there's like standalone, I think Prusa maybe has a standalone filament management system, but you have to whatever it is, whichever one I'm thinking of, you have to like estimate JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: how much filament was used from the spool. And JJ Shankles: Mm. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: again, I don't know how Watchtower handles this, but there is capability now. Where if a print fails, Watchtower can estimate how much it did use and should JJ Shankles: Mm, yeah. Jerry Gomes: be able to account for that. Because if you're if you're doesn't matter what printer, because Watchtower is the one that sent the print job to the printer, it should be able to know. Like like I said, estimations. After X number of minutes, this much filament was used, whatever. JJ Shankles: Yes, yeah. And the whole a print in general is an estimation of like, you know, how much was purged of the you know, little bits here or there. but it's kind of just that like estimate to where I can see all the filaments that have just been printed on the same printer and s can see about how much is in each one. and since this is software it uses all of your printers, it's not this, I need to sync between Creality and Bamboo Lab. It's like, no, here Watchtower now. does it and I can see you click the reconcile button to be and it'll be like hey where did this spool go? You're like, it's from here and I put it on storage rack number one or it's in this pile, Jerry Gomes: Yeah, that's nice. JJ Shankles: you know, wherever you name your piles of filament. For me it's kind of a mess on the floor, so it's not that useful. Jerry Gomes: Well, what it looks not like it it tells you like what's low on stock, right? So if JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: you have like I don't know I don't know how it estimates low stock, but it tells you what's low. So it like for someone like you or me, probably doesn't quite matter, but if you are an actual 3D print farm, you've got a JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: hundred bamboos, a hundred, you know, corality printers, you might not know if you're running low on black Carbon fiber, blue carbon fi whatever it is like pink PETG. I've only got JJ Shankles: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: five spools because I rarely ever need it. But I probably wouldn't notice when that's running low. Especially when one of my employees loaded the spool yesterday I was off duty. He printed JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: all kill like now it tells you. JJ Shankles: Yeah, now it tells you. And that it's it's the first one where I've wanted to actually put it in there to kind of sometimes I am like, I think I have some black matte PLA and then I go looking for it and it's like, it's not where I thought it was. it's not where it should be. Mm, maybe I don't have any black PLA but to have this kind of be like, No, you have three spools. Keep looking, it's there, like Jerry Gomes: Well, for yeah, and so th you make a good point there. It's like forget tracking amounts of material left. Just track where it is. If if there's JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: an app on the phone that's super easy to scan a QR code JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: and like you scan the QR code and you tell you and you tell the system where it is, and then and then you just say that it's it's like expended. You go from a hundred percent to zero percent, don't even track the individual usage. Now JJ Shankles: Mm. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: You do know where it is and you do know if you don't have it, because funny JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: enough, I've also very recently had that. I'm pretty sure I have black PLA somewhere or black P-E-T-G JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: somewhere. Like, I'm sure I have one roll of black like a one brand new roll of black PETG somewhere. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: And I've gone on a on a g wild goose chase for it. couldn't find it, so had to buy more. But JJ Shankles: Mm. Jerry Gomes: turns out I probably didn't have any. But JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: No, that's a really good point just for locating it rather than managing how much you have. JJ Shankles: the the benefit of locating it inside of your CFSs or AMS, if you have a lot of them, I have several on printers that aren't turned on. So I can't go into Creality Print and be like, what's loaded on my K two Pro C F S? It's like, that printer's not turned on unless I need it and but Watchtower would know, you have these four spools loaded in that printer, and it's a dark box and so it you can't see a black filament in the last slot sometimes like Jerry Gomes: Yeah, it's what Taylor has done here is very impressive and we didn't even get into what like pertains to me. The orders it can automatically import JJ Shankles: yes. Jerry Gomes: from Etsy and I don't know what other I don't know what other importers, I don't know if it can do eBay and stuff, but it can automatically import from Etsy. Now currently the beta the beta license doesn't have this integrated. I don't JJ Shankles: Hm. Jerry Gomes: know if it's because it's not ready for prime time or what, but like goodness gracious, that would actually be valuable to me because like I well I print a I print batches and then do storage of JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: of parts. So when I get a sale I just go off the shelf, pull the already printed part. But there are things that I do sell that I would love Or that I that I would love to list back for sale, but the quantit the volume is so low that JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: I'm not going to print batches of them and then like just have batches of things sitting on the shelf for years b or for a year for one sale. But JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: if it can import with Etsy and I can say when this listing sells, automatically put this on the queue. Who wouldn't? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's Jerry Gomes: Like JJ Shankles: it's when he showed me how powerful it was, it's like that is so cool that it auto cues it of like cool, there was a sale, now it's on your queue. You wake up, you show up to your dashboard and it's like, these things were sold and need to start printing. So you say click ready, click ready, click ready, and they're printing again. Like Jerry Gomes: All you do is slice the file. You would import the file, right? JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: And then you link the file to the listing. And when the listing sells, now you might have to go in like you the the sliced file only pertains to these particular printers, right? So JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: again, I don't have access to this, so I it I don't know how JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: it works, but like if it's a green part. All I gotta do is put green on one of the accessible printers and then click the go button. I don't have to read I don't have to find the file on my computer, open the slicer, slice the file, send the file to the printer, load the filament, and fight with it. Just it's ready to go. Like JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You could pre slice if you if you are doing this print farm stuff, have it have your sellable items pre sliced and sent to all of your print farm printers. And so when a new order comes in, it'll go to whichever printer is available. You just click click go. Jerry Gomes: Yeah. And imagine I keep I keep having a repeal, so but like I would love to get access to this so I could know how it works, but imagine JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm, yeah. Jerry Gomes: you've got like let's say it's a flexible dragon. I don't care. You got a flexible dragon in green. It has to be sliced differently for your X1 carbon versus your K two plus, right? Okay, so you c what like I assume you can slice it for both printers, send it to both printers, and then you can link both of those files to the listing so when it JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: sells it tells you it can be printed on either this machine or this machine and then at that point you figure out which machine to load the filament onto. I could only imagine that's how it works. But yeah you wake JJ Shankles: Yeah. And I Jerry Gomes: up and it says load filament into X1 carbon three. Okay. JJ Shankles: Yeah. I think it can even filter by color. So say this dragon if you're selling dragons. So you sell a dragon in green and on this printer you've got red, blue and orange, and this one you have green and purple on and it'll be like, i we should send it to this printer because this one has a com close enough color. There's this whole filter of like how close a color needs to be. And so you can be like it needs to be this close to green. Or to this, you it's dark green if you're like, no, I want dark green to be different than light green then to be like, here's Jerry Gomes: That is pretty. JJ Shankles: my range of dark greens that are acceptable for this print and here's the range for light green or stuff like that. Yeah. Jerry Gomes: Yeah. No, that's impressive, right? So at this point, imagine imagine you are wow, that's wild. So imagine you are a legit print farm with four hundred bamboos. You've got four of them with green, four of them with yellow, four of them with red, right? And different JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: sh like now like it literally knows what's loaded into the machine and it knows which ex which applicable machines it could possibly go to. And then JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: when one of them is ready, it just says it's like one of the things with selling parts online, and I I get we I gotta make this quick because we're we're nearing the end of the podcast, but one of the things JJ Shankles: Yeah, we're running out of time, but Jerry Gomes: with selling parts is managing the actual files. It's not JJ Shankles: Mm-hmm. Jerry Gomes: like you you don't have to print. Like you sorry, you don't you don't like you don't actually do the manual labor of printing. The machine does it for you. The hard part about printing and selling is managing the files. And the more sales you get, or the more listings you have, the more sales you get. I've talked about this before. It's JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: better to put a hundred eggs in one basket than to put one golden egg in the basket, kind JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: of thing. so if I listed a hundred and fifty parts for sale, when one of them sells, now I guarantee you on my Creality machine or on my bamboo machine, whichever one it is, it's gonna take me forever to find that file because I've sent 50 files to it before. So the most effective way to reprint that part is to re-slice it and resend it. This way I guarantee I get the right file. And that is not easy. It takes time. JJ Shankles: Yeah. Jerry Gomes: This it doesn't matter if you've sent four hundred files, it stays linked in the software. And like I just I don't know. Blows my mind. JJ Shankles: Yeah. It's one of those where it's he found a lack in the market of like, hey, there wasn't good print management software. And so he made some really good print management software. And where it is powerful for print farms and sellers. But even for I was impressed even for my scale of like I, you know, I do have one printer running in the background right now. One. And it's still really useful for that. Like Yeah. Jerry Gomes: Yeah. guys, Taylor YGK three D, he is a fellow creator on YouTube. he has a very small team developing all of this in-house. It's all like custom proprietary, it's incredible software. If you guys are interested, there's a Kickstarter page. You should check it out. and you can check him out on YouTube as well. He's got some content about Watchtower on his channel, but JJ Shankles: Yes. Jerry Gomes: We are running out of time in this podcast. So if you if you like the video, make sure to leave a like and a comment down below. Let us know if you want to learn more about Watchtower. Let us know if you want to get Taylor on the podcast for a redo where he can tell you all about it, the things that you know we got wrong or didn't even mention. JJ Shankles: Yes. Jerry Gomes: but anyway, guys, we post every Friday. Make sure you check it out. and then we'll see you guys next one. See you later. Bye. JJ Shankles: See you next week. Bye.