This Inexpensive Product Turns Your Bambu Lab A1 Mini Into a Desktop Factory

This isn’t the kind of thing I normally cover, but I have seen videos about it from a few YouTubers I follow and it is just too cool to ignore. The PlateCycler C1M is a remarkably affordable product from Chitu System that lets a Bambu Lab A1 Mini 3D printer run endlessly, automatically swapping build plates between prints.

This only works with the Bambu Lab A1 Mini and is not even slightly universal. It is a purely mechanical system with no electronics whatsoever. But once installed, it will let the A1 Mini push out a build plate after a print job and load a new build plate from the stack for the next print job. If you clean off and replace the build plates before the stack empties, you can keep running the printer indefinitely (up to 10 build plates per file). It is like having a little factory on your desk.

As YouTubers like Aurora Tech have noted, the mechanical function of the PlateCycler C1M is ingenious. It relies on the printer’s own motion, orchestrated with some simple g-code injections, to swap plates. Chitu provides a web app to inject that g-code.

That clever engineering makes the price almost unbelievable. It costs just $79.99 and that includes four PEI build plates. A1 Mini build plates alone cost $10-20 and you’re getting the entire cycler system on top of the build plates, so the value is really compelling.

I haven’t tested the PlateCycler C1M myself and don’t have an A1 Mini to test it with. But from what I’ve seen from creators that I trust, it works very well. The only major disadvantage I can see is that it drops used build plates off the front, which means you need something setup to catch those — ideally without breaking any fragile printed parts.