MechAMS technical notes and FAQ.

A fully 3D-printable, mechanical multi-material system for the Bambu Lab A1. Four slots out of the box, up to eight with Y-splitters, no extra motors or electronics.

Cheaper, fully printable, and yours to mod. If you want a closed box you bolt on once and never touch, buy the official one. If you like building part of your own machine, MechAMS is for you.

Four at once out of the box, eight with Y-splitters. Multi-color and multi-material both work.

PLA, PETG, PETG Translucent, PLA-CF, AMS TPU, PETG-CF, and PLA support materials.

No. It unlocks more colors and materials. Print quality stays the same.

No. It is the same as the printer itself.

Bambu Lab A1 and Bambu Lab A1 Mini. Other printer versions are not released yet.

Available now. The A1 Mini uses the same core tolerance downloads as the A1, plus a Mini-specific top bar and generated G-code path. Existing buyers get it with the same purchase.

Maybe. The mechanism is mechanical, so any direct-drive extruder is in scope in principle. Official support expands only after a printer version is tested, documented, and reliable enough to publish.

Not as a stock setup; they fight for the same extruder path. Coexistence would need a dedicated mode and is not part of the current release.

Roughly ~800 g of regular filament plus ~5–10 g of TPU. The breakdown is in the What you need section above.

PLA works for trial builds. PLA-CF is the durable recommendation. PETG can work if it still has enough give for the crown gears to mesh. Flexible parts need TPU.

The hex keys from your A1, a file or sanding stick, tweezers, and PTFE tubing. The tools card above has the short list.

No. Use a drybox or dryer if humidity matters to your material.

Yes. The toolhead gets real mechanical changes (filing the extruder shaft, relocating the filament sensor, etc). This isn’t a clip-on accessory.

Almost certainly. If warranty is sacred to you, don’t install MechAMS.

A proper DIY project. Not IKEA. If you can follow a visual walkthrough and stay patient, you’ll get there.

Printing time scales with slot count. Assembly and tuning fits in an evening or a day.

Not at stock A1 speeds. Push the printer well above stock speeds and you may want to tune acceleration, same as any toolhead change.

A few centimeters off the top in the current release. A future version is planned to reduce that to near zero.

Set up a MechAMS printer profile once, generate the setup-specific toolchange macro, then slice in Bambu Studio or Orca like normal. For each print, choose the slicer filaments that match your physical slot map. No hand-editing every print file.

You do, not the printer. Slot 1, 2, 3… are physical filament paths. The color or material labels come from the slicer and your written slot map. There’s no electronic sensor reporting back.

Keep the loaded state known before a job. If the toolhead is empty, the experimental start-load path can load the first slicer filament after validation. If the loaded state is unknown, check it manually before sending another automatic file.

About 1.5 minutes per full color change as a starting point. Fastest recorded swap: 89 seconds.

Tunable. Out of the box it’s in the same ballpark as a normal AMS; you can push lower at the cost of color bleed.

A little. Mostly tunable away with temperature, timing, retraction, and purge settings.

No mechanical G-code system can promise that. MechAMS works as long as the printer keeps accepting standard motion and change-filament commands.

The download ships multiple tolerance variants and a test jig. Start with the recommended one; loosen or tighten if the fit tells you to.

Teeth are tapered so a perfectly-square land is statistically rare, and the TPU section gives just enough compliance to settle.

It’s a tuned DIY mechanism. Expect occasional fiddling, especially early. If you want zero maintenance, this isn’t it.

No shipping. No spare-part wait. Reprint the worn piece from the same files and swap it in.

The printable files (3MF), the G-code generator, the visual setup video, the online docs, and access to the private buyer Discord. The A1 and A1 Mini releases are included, plus every future printer version released under MechAMS. No second payment.

The core mechanism is patent-pending and paid.Everything around it is open: inside the buyer Discord and the Launchpad, code, settings, fixes, mods, printer ports, scripts, jigs, and ideas get shared openly. Your purchase is what funds that, and it’s what gives you the right to keep modding it forever.

So the project can keep being funded. It is not a granted patent, and it is not there to stop you printing, modding, fixing, or sharing improvements inside the community.

Validation prints, docs, generator development, support, hosting, and the next printer port. You vote on which one comes next.

The working room. Support, troubleshooting, mod sharing, port projects, early previews. It’s private to buyers so people can share files and code openly without the paid core ending up on a torrent site.

Share anything you make (mods, scripts, fixes, settings, logs) inside the buyer Discord and the Launchpad. That’s the point. Don’t repost the paid files outside those spaces. Send your friend here if they want in.

Not by default. If you want to sell kits, talk to me first. There are options.

Digital product, so generally no. Once you download, you have it forever. If there’s a real technical issue, email me and we’ll sort it.

Yes. Fixes and refinements get pushed as they’re ready, free for existing buyers.

Install questions, doc clarifications, and pointing you in the right direction. I can’t remotely rebuild your printer or debug an unrelated setup; that’s what the buyer Discord community is for.

Send photos, videos, mods, prints, or port attempts via Instagram (@sipersmechatronics), TikTok, Reddit (r/MechAMS), or email (contact@sipersmechatronics.com). Good ones land in the Gallery.