Printers
Marking a Printer Down
Take a printer out of service with a recorded reason, and put it back when it's fixed.
When a printer needs maintenance (a clogged nozzle, a worn belt, a missing part) mark it down. The printer stops being given new jobs, and everyone who looks at it can see why it’s unavailable and who took it out of service.
This is the answer to the two questions that come up every time a machine goes quiet: why is this printer down? and who marked it down?
Marking a printer down
You can do this from the web app (Printers page or a printer’s detail page) and from a print station.
- Choose Mark Down on the printer.
- Write the reason. This is required. It’s the whole point.
- If the printer is mid-print, choose when it goes down:
- Take down now: the running job is marked failed.
- Take down after this job finishes: the print completes first. No new jobs are sent in the meantime, so the printer drains rather than picking up more work.
- Confirm.
The printer now shows a compact Down badge in the printer list. Open its detail page or dialog to see the recorded reason, who marked it down, and any underlying printer errors. If the printer is finishing a job first, its card shows Going down with the reason until the downtime begins.
Returning a printer to service
Choose Return to Service on a printer that’s down. You can add an optional note about what you did: “replaced the hotend and ran a calibration print”. The note is kept with the downtime record, which is what turns the history into a maintenance log.
As soon as the printer is back, Pluraprint reconsiders the queue and can dispatch waiting jobs to it.
Maintenance history
Every downtime is kept. A printer’s detail page shows its Maintenance History: each period the machine was out of service, the reason, who marked it down, who brought it back, when, and any note they left. Nothing is overwritten: marking a printer down a second time adds a record rather than replacing the first.
Marking a printer down from a station
Whoever finds the broken machine is usually standing in front of it, so stations can mark printers down too. Whether the option appears, and whether the person has to identify themselves first: depends on the station’s template:
- The template must grant the Mark Down (or Restore) capability.
- If that capability requires identification, the operator scans their card or enters their PIN when they submit, and that person is recorded against the downtime. They also need the matching station permission on their own account.
See Setting Up a Station for how capabilities and identification are configured.
Down vs. disabled
These are different tools, and picking the right one matters:
| Marked down | Disabled | |
|---|---|---|
| Means | Temporarily out of service | Not part of the active fleet |
| Reason recorded | Required | None |
| Who did it recorded | Yes, with a history | No |
| Who can see the printer | Everyone | Only people who can edit printers |
| Gets new jobs | No | No |
| Use it for | Maintenance, faults, missing parts | Retiring a printer, machines on loan, ones you’re not ready to expose |
| Where you do it | Mark Down / Return to Service on the printer | The Enabled checkbox in Edit Printer |
The short version: mark a printer down when it’s broken; disable it when it shouldn’t be in the fleet at all. A down printer stays visible on the floor on purpose. That’s how people know not to wait on it. Because marking down is the everyday tool, disabling has no buttons of its own. It’s a setting on the printer, changed in the edit dialog.
Permissions
| Permission | Allows |
|---|---|
printer.mark_down | Take a printer out of service with a reason |
printer.restore | Return a printer that’s down to service |
Both exist in the web and station scopes, so you can allow any operator to flag a broken machine while keeping “this is fixed” with your maintenance team. See Roles & Permissions.
What happens to jobs
- Queued jobs aren’t cancelled. A down printer is skipped when Pluraprint assigns work, so jobs wait for another compatible printer, or for this one to come back.
- Submissions still succeed. A downtime is temporary, so it doesn’t stop someone submitting a job that only this printer can run; the job queues and prints when the printer returns.
- A running job is marked failed only if you chose to take the printer down immediately.
- Wait-time estimates exclude printers that are down, so the queue estimate reflects the machines that can actually print.