Printer maintenance: keep your fleet running smoothly

Printers need regular maintenance. Nozzles wear out, belts stretch, bearings get dusty, and beds need cleaning. When you're running one or two printers, it's easy to keep track of in your head. But once you have a fleet - whether it's a print farm, a school lab, or a workshop with a dozen machines - maintenance gets complicated fast. Things slip through the cracks. A clogged nozzle takes a printer offline for a day. A loose belt causes a string of failed prints before anyone notices.

SimplyPrint's maintenance feature is built to solve this. It gives you a structured way to define what maintenance your printers need, automate when it happens, track the work as it gets done, and keep a record of everything for each printer.

Who is this for?

The maintenance feature is designed for teams and organizations running multiple printers:

• Print farms that need consistent uptime and want to prevent failures before they happen
• Schools and universities where students and staff share printers and you need clear procedures everyone can follow
• Makerspaces and workshops where multiple people use the same equipment and accountability matters
• Any operation where you've ever thought "when was the last time someone cleaned that nozzle?"

If you're a single user with one printer, you can still use maintenance to stay organized - but the feature really shines when there's a team involved. Assigning jobs, routing notifications, tracking who did what, and making sure nothing falls through the cracks across a fleet of printers.

What can you do with it?

At a high level, the maintenance feature lets you:

• Define maintenance procedures once, reuse them forever. Create task templates like "clean print bed" or "replace nozzle" with step-by-step instructions, reference links, and spare part requirements. New team members can follow them without training.
• Automate scheduling based on real usage. Set up schedules that create maintenance jobs based on time (every 30 days), actual printer usage (every 500 print hours), filament consumption, print count, or even failure rates. No more guessing when a printer was last serviced.
• Count wear by what you print. With the recommended wear modifiers added, a task like "Replace nozzle" comes due sooner on a brass nozzle printing carbon fibre and later on a hardened nozzle printing PLA.
• Track maintenance work from start to finish. Jobs have a checklist of tasks, track progress, and optionally put the printer into maintenance mode so no one accidentally sends prints to it while it's being worked on.
• Manage spare parts inventory. Track nozzles, belts, bearings, and other consumables with stock levels, low-stock alerts, and automatic deduction when tasks are completed.
• Report and resolve problems. When someone notices an issue with a printer - whether it's making a weird noise or prints keep failing - they can report it. Problems get linked to maintenance jobs so there's a clear trail from discovery to resolution.
• See problems and due maintenance where you work. Open problems, overdue maintenance and the printer's note show on the printer cards, on the printer's own page and when you start a print, so the next shift knows what the last one found.

Table of contents

• How it all fits together
• The maintenance dashboard
• The five building blocks
• Problems and due maintenance at a glance
• Printer maintenance profiles
• Single-user vs multi-user accounts
• Permissions
• Account settings
• Notifications
• Integration with AutoPrint and 1-Click Print
• Related articles

How it all fits together

The maintenance system is built around five concepts that work together:

1. Task templates define what needs to be done - step-by-step procedures like "clean print bed" or "inspect nozzle"
2. Schedules automate when maintenance happens - based on time, print hours, filament usage, or failure counts
3. Jobs are the actual work orders - they contain tasks from your templates and track progress
4. Inventory tracks your spare parts - stock levels, low-stock alerts, and automatic deduction when tasks are completed
5. Problems let anyone report printer issues - which can then be linked to maintenance jobs

The typical workflow looks like this: you start by defining task templates for the maintenance procedures your printers need. Then you set up schedules to automate job creation. When a job is created (manually or by a schedule), it contains a checklist of tasks. Your team works through the tasks, and the system tracks progress, deducts spare parts, and logs everything.

The maintenance dashboard

The dashboard is your starting point. It shows:

• Stat cards at the top with quick counts - printers in maintenance, jobs due, open problems, and inventory status
• Printer status table showing all your printers grouped by maintenance state (in maintenance, overdue, scheduled, operational)
• Recent jobs with status and progress
• Active schedules showing your automation rules

If you're new to the feature, the dashboard shows a "Getting started" guide that walks you through the setup steps.

The five building blocks

Each building block has its own tab in the maintenance page and its own detailed article:

Task templates

Templates are reusable maintenance procedures. Each template defines a task name, instructions, category (cleaning, lubrication, replacement, etc.), estimated time, and optionally which spare parts it needs. Templates can have triggers that tell the scheduling system when they become "due."

A usage-based template can also count the wear of a nozzle or build plate. Its print hours then count faster or slower depending on what was printed, following the account's wear modifiers.

Read more: Task templates: define reusable maintenance procedures

Schedules

Schedules are automation rules that create maintenance jobs automatically. You configure a trigger (every 30 days, every 200 print hours, after 5 failures, etc.), a scope (all printers, specific models, or specific groups), and which templates to include. The system checks every hour and creates jobs when conditions are met.

Read more: Maintenance schedules: automate recurring maintenance

Jobs

Jobs are the core of maintenance tracking. A job is a work order for one or more printers, containing a checklist of tasks. You can create jobs manually or let schedules create them automatically. Jobs track progress as tasks are completed, and optionally put the printer into maintenance mode.

When a schedule makes several printers due at about the same time, their jobs share a batch, so you can tick off a task on every printer at once, mark everything done after a round of the floor, and use Next due to go straight on to the next job.

Read more: Maintenance jobs: scheduling and completing printer maintenance

Inventory

The inventory system tracks spare parts - nozzles, belts, bearings, PTFE tubes, and more. Set stock quantities and low-stock thresholds, and the system automatically deducts parts when maintenance tasks are completed. You get alerts when stock runs low.

Read more: Spare parts inventory: track and manage maintenance supplies

Problems

Problems are issue reports. Anyone with the right permission can report a printer problem - either from the maintenance page or directly when cancelling a print. Problems can be linked to maintenance jobs, and they auto-resolve when the linked job is completed.

Read more: Reporting and resolving printer problems

Problems and due maintenance at a glance

You don't have to open the maintenance page to know which printers need attention. SimplyPrint shows it in the places you already work:

• Printer cards. On the Printers page, beside the tags, a printer can show a red flag with its number of open problems, a red Overdue badge when its next scheduled maintenance job is past its date, or an amber Due soon badge when that job is due within 7 days. Click a flag or badge to open the printer's maintenance profile. When the card is short on room, and always in the compact and list views, the badges show as icons only; hover them to see what they mean.
• Printer filter. Type has_open_problems:true in the printer search to see only printers with open problems. See Printer search and filtering for the other maintenance filters.
• The printer's page. The Maintenance widget opens by itself when the printer is in maintenance or has open problems. It shows the printer's runtime, print count and days since its last maintenance, the active job (with Start on a scheduled or overdue job), and the open problems. Click N open problems or Profile to open the maintenance profile.
• Starting a print. When a printer's maintenance is overdue, the start print window says so: "Maintenance on this printer has been overdue since (date). You can still start this print." Open maintenance takes you to the printer's maintenance profile. It is a heads-up, not a block.

Notes for the next shift

Each printer can carry a Note for printer, such as "fan rattles above 80%". It shows as a note icon on the printer card (hover it to read the note), on the printer's page, in the start print window, and under the printer's name in 1-Click Print and in the Clear bed window. To write one, use Add note or Edit note in the printer's ... menu, or edit it right on the printer's page. The note is the same one you find in the printer's settings.

Reading and writing notes are their own permissions, See printer notes and Edit printer notes, so someone on the floor can leave a note without being able to change the printer's settings. See User groups and permissions. Everything about notes is in Printer notes.

Printer maintenance profiles

Every printer has a maintenance profile you can access from the maintenance page. The profile shows:

• Printer status at the top - operational, scheduled, overdue, in maintenance, or out of order
• Stats cards for total maintenances, total downtime, next scheduled maintenance, and open problems
• Health metrics including days since last maintenance, print hours, success rate. Runtime is the printer's lifetime print time. If you entered print hours from before SimplyPrint in the printer's settings, they are included and shown below it, for example "incl. 1.8k h before SimplyPrint". See Adding print hours from before SimplyPrint to a printer's runtime.
• Job history for this specific printer
• Task completion history showing which tasks were done, when, and by whom
• Parts consumed tracking spare parts used on this printer
• Open problems with quick actions to resolve or create jobs. The list scrolls in its own box, so a long list doesn't push the rest of the profile down. With more than 3 open problems, each one starts collapsed; click a problem to open it.
• Activity timeline with comments and system events

The profile also shows when the next scheduled maintenance is predicted, even before a job has been created for it. For example, if a printer is on a quarterly schedule and was just maintained, the profile shows the next maintenance is due in 90 days. This prediction is based on your active maintenance schedules and gives visibility into upcoming work.

If a printer is marked as out of order (from a problem report or manually), its maintenance profile reflects this with an "Out of order" status badge.

This gives you a complete maintenance history for each printer, making it easy to spot patterns or recurring issues.

Single-user vs multi-user accounts

The maintenance feature works for both small and large setups:

Single-user accounts: You manage everything yourself. You create templates, set up schedules, complete tasks, and track parts. Permissions and assignment features aren't relevant since you're the only user.

Multi-user accounts: This is where maintenance really shines. You can:

• Assign jobs to specific team members
• Assign individual tasks to different users within the same job (enable "task assignment" in settings)
• Set default responsible users on templates, so tasks automatically get assigned
• Control who can do what with granular permissions
• Route notifications to the right people

Permissions

The maintenance feature uses five permission levels:

Permissions are configured in Settings > Users & permissions by your account administrator.

Account settings

You'll find maintenance settings under Settings > Maintenance. Available options include:

• Enable/disable maintenance - master toggle for the feature
• Max concurrent jobs - limit how many printers can be in maintenance at the same time
• Max jobs per week - cap on automatically created jobs per week
• Max jobs per month - cap on automatically created jobs per month
• Task assignment - enable per-task user assignment within jobs
• Wear modifiers - rules that make nozzle and build plate tasks come due sooner or later by what was printed. See Wear modifiers: nozzle and build plate maintenance that follows what you print
• Notification recipients - choose who receives maintenance notifications
• Notification preferences - configure which events trigger notifications

Notifications

The maintenance system sends notifications for key events:

• Job assigned to you
• Job due soon
• Job overdue
• Job started
• Job completed
• Task assigned to you
• Spare parts low stock

Each user can manage their own notification preferences in their user settings. Account administrators can also set default notification recipients in the maintenance settings.

Integration with AutoPrint and 1-Click Print

When a printer is in maintenance mode (from an active maintenance job with "puts printer in maintenance" enabled):

• AutoPrint will skip the printer - it won't receive any automatic prints
• 1-Click Print will not include the printer in printer selection
• The print queue will not match items to the printer

This prevents prints from being sent to a printer that's being worked on, similar to the "out of order" behavior. The printer automatically exits maintenance mode when all its active maintenance jobs are completed or cancelled.

Overdue maintenance on its own does not hold prints back. When you start a print on a single printer whose maintenance is overdue, the start print window shows a warning with an Open maintenance button, and you can still start the print.

Related articles

• Maintenance jobs: scheduling and completing printer maintenance
• Task templates: define reusable maintenance procedures
• Wear modifiers: nozzle and build plate maintenance that follows what you print
• Maintenance schedules: automate recurring maintenance
• Spare parts inventory: track and manage maintenance supplies
• Reporting and resolving printer problems
• Adding print hours from before SimplyPrint to a printer's runtime
• Printer search and filtering: how it works, filter list & more

Updated on: 22/10/2026