Reserving machine time

A reservation gives you one printer in the X3D farm to yourself for as long as you hold it. You queue your own sliced files onto it, start and pause them from the dashboard, and watch the camera while they run. Nobody else's work goes on that machine until you release it.

It is the cheaper route when you have a lot of plastic to move and your own slicing profile, because you are renting the machine rather than buying finished parts. It is the wrong route for one bracket: for that, /print is simpler and comes with a quote up front.

The rates#

Minimums and limits#

• An hourly booking is 1 to 24 hours. Anything outside that is rejected with 400 Hours must be between 1 and 24.
• A daily booking is a 24-hour block and bills per started day, minimum one day.
• The hours you pick are an expectation, not a commitment — the bill comes from the real reserve-to-release time either way.
• You can only reserve a printer whose status is AVAILABLE. Busy, printing, reserved, offline and maintenance machines cannot be booked.
• A card on file is required before the reservation is created, because the time is metered and settled later.

Booking one#

1. 1
   Add a card

   Reserving without a card on file returns 402 with code CARD_REQUIRED, and the dashboard opens the card dialog. Nothing is charged to it at this point.

2. 2
   Pick an available printer

   Open /farm/dashboard/printers. Reserve is only enabled on a machine showing AVAILABLE; every other state shows why it is not bookable.

3. 3
   Choose a duration

   Hourly, daily, or open-ended. Open-ended is metered hourly and runs until you release it — it is stored as an hourly reservation.

4. 4
   Confirm

   The reservation is created immediately with a total of $0.00, the printer flips to RESERVED, and the clock starts at that moment.

   bashCopy

   curl -X POST https://x3dstudios.com/api/farm/reserve \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -b "$YOUR_SESSION_COOKIE" \
     -d '{"printerId":"prn_123","durationType":"HOURLY","hours":8}'

5. 5
   Release it when you are done

   Releasing meters the reservation, closes it as COMPLETED and returns the printer to AVAILABLE. A reservation you forget to release keeps billing.

   bashCopy

   curl -X DELETE "https://x3dstudios.com/api/farm/reserve?id=res_abc123" \
     -b "$YOUR_SESSION_COOKIE"
   # {"ok":true,"status":"COMPLETED","billedHours":8.42,"cost":12.63}

{
  "reservationId": "res_9f2c1a80-...",
  "printerId": "prn_123",
  "status": "ACTIVE",
  "totalCost": 0,
  "totalHours": 8
}

There is no GET on this route. Missing id returns 400, an unknown id returns 404, and releasing somebody else's reservation returns 403 unless you are an operator.

What you supply#

• A sliced file: .3mf, .gcode or .gco. The farm does not slice for you on this path — the plate is yours, including its supports, its purge and its profile.
• A file sliced for the model you booked. A plate sliced for a different Bambu machine is a hard fail in validation, not a warning.
• A material choice. The farm loads Generic PLA, PETG, PC and ABS in twelve colours; ask for a spool with a filament change request and an operator loads it. One open request per printer at a time.
• A card on file, and an account in good standing when the monthly charge runs.

Every file is validated before it is queued: dangerous G-code commands, nozzle and bed temperatures, and printer-model compatibility. A temperature above the material's usual ceiling is only a warning; what actually fails a file is a dangerous command, a temperature past the absolute hardware limit (320 C nozzle, 130 C bed), or a plate sliced for the wrong printer. A file that does not pass is refused with 422 and the check results, rather than being queued and failing on the machine.

Who operates the machine#

You do, remotely, for everything that is safe to do remotely. An operator does the physical work.

A worked example#

You book a printer hourly at 9:00, run three plates back to back, and release it at 18:30 — 9.5 hours held. The plates consume 640 g of PLA between them.

The same 640 g ordered as finished prints at /print would be 640 x $0.12 = $76.80 before postage. That gap is the whole point of the product: on a reservation you are buying machine hours and plastic, and doing the slicing, nesting and quality judgement yourself. It also cuts the other way — a machine you hold and do not use bills exactly the same as one you keep busy.

How it gets paid#

Nothing is taken at booking or at release. Released reservations and completed jobs accrue to your farm balance, and the whole balance is charged to your card on the 1st of the month, off-session, with a receipt by email. A balance under $0.50 is too small for Stripe to take and rolls into the following month. A declined card leaves the balance open and emails you; items are only marked settled once money actually moved, so a retry cannot double-charge you.