We assume that you love OctoPrint and cherish its capability to control and monitor your 3D printers, from anywhere. If you are already an OctoPrint user and want to take it to the next level, then you have arrived at the right place. With this article, we bring you the 7 best OctoPrint plugins for advanced users.

OctoPrint is only as good as the plugins you use to enhance it. Basic OctoPrint will only give you so much freedom but with advanced plugins, you can boost your 3D printing experience.

If you are new to OctoPrint then you better check out the best OctoPrint plugins for beginners and comeback to this article later.

TP-link smartplug is one of the best OctoPrint plugin and one which is not known to many users. It is a wonderful home automation plugin for OctoPrint that allows users to control their 3D printer with voice commands. The only pre-requisite is that it requires a TP Link KASA WiFi smartplug which can bought from multiple e-commerce websites. The installation is quite simple and you’ll just have to follow the instructions.

Also download the smartphone app to command your 3D printer. This device also lets you talk to your printer via Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa device.

You can connect multiple 3D printers with this device giving a unique name to each of the connected 3D printers. A typical command to switch on your printer will be to say the name of the printer out loud followed by the command.

This is also one of the best OctoPrint plugin and a lifesaver for many. Many of you must be printing multiple parts simultaneously. Have you ever faced with a situation where one of the par fails midway while the others are perfect. What happens in such a scenario is that the printer continues to deposit material for the bad part. This causes wastage of material and even waste of time.

In the conventional way, you cannot do much in this case, you either continue the print and see wastage of material and face the possibility of the spaghetti formation that can also interfere with other prints and fail them or just stop the entire print – which also means waste of material.

But what if we told you that there is an awesome solution to this problem. With a simple Exclude Region plugin, you can select the failed prints just by selecting the parts on your OctoPrint dashboard. Once the parts are selected, the printer will skip those gcode commands and will not print those parts.

A perfect solution to not only save material but also print time without hampering the other prints.

Enclosures are found on the vast majority of desktop 3D printers. Enclosures are an excellent addition to help you improve your printing output. It protects the print bed from dirt and dust, has heaters to keep the print environment stable, has lights & fans, additional sensors, can be used to mount webcams and other accessories, and has many other advantages.

You also may have a printer enclosure, but are you utilising it to its full potential? Most likely not.

Enclosure plugin is one OctoPrint plugin that allows you to control and manage all enclosure activities such as temperature, lighting, fan, sensors and everything.

With the plugin, you can control not only your 3D printer and prints, but also the enclosure and printing environment, giving you unprecedented control over your prints.

Many of you may not have heard of this plugin, but you will undoubtedly enjoy it. To take your 3D printing experience to the next level, try this.

Before we begin to talk about the Arc Welder plugin, we need to understand a few basics and so, let us explain.

It is common knowledge that 3D printers use gcodes to perform actions in order to print a part. Most commonly used gcodes are the G0 & G1 codes, used for linear movements. But did you know that G2 and G3 codes are sometimes used for specific movements?

G2 and G3 codes, in particular, are used for curved or arc movements. These are excellent for printing round objects. Why, you might ask? The reasoning is straightforward. In the case of G0 & G1 codes, the printhead will need to move twice—once in the X-direction and once in the Y-direction—in order to move from one point to another on an arc. Whereas in the case of G2 and G3 movements, the printhead will trace an arc, eliminating extra movements and lines of code.

Additionally, for tiny movements, printheads must move rapidly in the X and Y directions, thus causing vibrations. This presents its own set of long-term issues. As a result, using G2 and G3 codes for arc movements reduces the possibility of vibrations.

Thus, the benefit of arc movements is threefold. You can shorten the gcode file by literally halving the code length, increasing the pace of prints, and reduce the possibility of vibrations affecting your 3D printer.

But why are we telling you about the benefits of G2 and G3 codes? The reason for this is that most printers only use G0 and G1 codes. As a result, you will never enjoy this advantage. However, we introduce you to the Arc Welder plugin, which takes multiple points in your gcodes and converts them to arcs using G2/G3 gcodes. Arc movements also result in better print quality for round objects, faster print times, and other benefits.

Obico plugin is the successor of the hugely popular The Spaghetti Detective plugin. The same team is bringing Obico. It allows you to securely monitor and control your OctoPrint-connected 3D printer from anywhere at no cost. But wait, there’s more. Obico also has AI-enabled failure detection, which identifies and warns you of potential failures to prevent printer damage. You must enable webcam streaming for this to work. Obico is also available on mobile devices, with both Android and iOS apps available for free download. You can read more about this plugin in our best OctoPrint plugins article.

This might not exactly fall into the advanced user category but we thought you might like it. The Thingiverse Downloader plugin does exactly what it says it does: it allows you to download 3D models from Thingiverse directly to your OctoPrint instance. However, to view/upload STL files to OctoPrint, you simply need to install an additional plugin such as Octoprint-Slic3r, STL Viewer, or others.

This is quite a resourceful OctoPrint plugin, pun intended. The Resource Monitor plugin is used to view your system’s current CPU, RAM, disc, and network usage. It adds a simple tab that displays various statistics and graphs about your system’s resource usage. It shows you data about your CPU, memory, discs, and network usage. If you are using multiple printers or livestreaming through webcam then this plugin will help you understand how much load the OctoPrint is putting on your system.

These are our pick for the 7 best Octoprint plugins for advanced users. Being open-source, enables OctoPrint to build more and more such useful plugins that help enhance the 3D printing experience. You can find many more such interesting plugins and you can even let us know which one you tried and liked.

If you loved our collection, then we encourage you to share this post on your social media pages, tag us while doing so and also comment on our posts. If you think you have found some new and interesting plugins that should be a part of this list, then write to us at inquiries@manufactur3dmag.com.

If you want to check out more OctoPrint plugins, do check out the best OctoPrint plugins for beginners.

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