Four hours of 3D printing.
Fifteen seconds of film.
SliceLapse is a phone app that turns an Android phone or iPhone into a layer-by-layer timelapse camera for Bambu Lab 3D printers. It listens to the printer over your own network and snaps one photo the moment each layer finishes. Prop the phone on the bench, start the print, come back to a film.
Printing on a Bambu today? Ask for a beta invite.
How to make a 3D print timelapse with your phone
Put a Bambu Lab printer in LAN mode, slice the plate with Smooth timelapse and a slow, wide prime tower, then prop your phone in front of it and tap Start. One setting in the slicer, three steps in the app, and nothing edited into your G-code.
Slice with Smooth timelapse and a slow, wide prime tower
In Bambu Studio, set the plate's Timelapse to Smooth. That forces a prime tower and sends the toolhead off the model at every layer change. The seconds it spends printing that tower, layer finished and model untouched, are the gap the camera shoots into. Widen the tower and slow it down to make that gap longer. The cost is filament and time: the tower is waste, and slowing it lengthens every layer.
We find the printer on your LAN
SliceLapse sweeps your network, spots the machine and fills in its address and serial for you.
You type the access code once
The access code sits on the printer's own screen, under Network. Eight characters, once, forever.
Prop the phone up, walk away
Frame the plate, tap Start, then start the print. Exposure locks a few seconds in. After that an Android phone can go dark, while an iPhone holds its screen on and stays with the print.
Exposure locked, so the film doesn't flicker
Brightness, white balance and focus hold from the first layer to the last, even when the shop lights change at dusk.
Tune the timing without guessing
A short wait after each layer lets the toolhead park on the prime tower. Two seconds is the default; nudge it if a frame ever catches the head.
Everything stays on your phone
Stills and stitching happen on device, with the phone's own hardware encoder. Nothing is uploaded unless you choose to share it.
Works with Bambu Lab 3D printers in LAN mode
Why only Bambu Lab?SliceLapse needs an Android 11+ phone or an iPhone on iOS 15+, and a Bambu Lab printer in LAN mode on the same network. It talks to the printer's own MQTT broker, and that payload shape is Bambu-specific, so Prusa, Creality, Klipper and OctoPrint machines are not supported.
How is this different from the timelapse Bambu already has?
Bambu's own timelapse films the print with the camera in the machine. SliceLapse films it with the phone in your hand (your framing, your lens, your light) off the same layer-change notification the printer is already sending over your LAN.
The timelapse in the printer
Smooth mode already parks the toolhead over a prime tower at every layer change, and the printer records that pause on its own camera. SliceLapse rides the same pause with a camera you place and frame yourself, and the film is stitched on the phone.
The OctoPrint plugin
Octolapse is the long-standing answer for OctoPrint users, and it wants what OctoPrint wants: a host running beside the printer and a webcam configured in it. SliceLapse has no host and no webcam: the printer talks to the phone directly.
The monitoring service
Obico watches prints for failures, from its cloud or a server you host yourself, which is a thing SliceLapse does not do at all. SliceLapse has one job: a frame per layer, encoded on the phone, kept on the phone.
SliceLapse is not affiliated with Bambu Lab, OctoPrint or Obico; the names are here to say what works with what. More in the timelapse FAQ.
Timelapse questions from the workshop
Does my phone have to stay awake the whole print?
On Android, no: capture runs in a foreground service, so it keeps going with the screen off for the length of an eight-hour print. On iPhone, yes: iOS has no background camera at all, so the app holds the screen on, dimmed to near-black, and asks you to leave the phone alone until the print is done.
Does it work on iPhone, or only Android?
Both: Android 11 or newer, and iOS 15 or newer. The iPhone build has run against a real A1 over LAN: it found the printer, connected to its MQTT broker and took one frame a layer, in order, with no gaps. The difference between the two is background capture, and it is the answer above.
Do I need a slicer plugin, custom firmware or G-code edits?
None of the three. You do change one slicer setting: set the plate's timelapse to Smooth and slow the prime tower down. That tower is the gap the camera shoots into, and it is the step people miss.
Why does my 3D print timelapse flicker?
Because the phone keeps re-metering. The scene changes as the print grows and the shop light moves, so every frame is exposed a little differently. SliceLapse locks exposure, white balance and focus a few seconds in and holds them to the last layer, which is what keeps the finished film steady.
Do I need OctoPrint, a Raspberry Pi or a webcam?
No. The phone subscribes to the printer's own MQTT broker over your LAN, so there is no host to run beside the printer and no webcam to configure. What you do need is something that holds the phone still for a few hours: a tripod, or anything that does the same job.
What if a photo doesn't land?
SliceLapse pauses the print rather than letting it run on un-photographed. A broken timelapse is discovered hours later, when it is too late to do anything about it. A paused print isn't.
What if the print fails halfway?
You keep every frame captured up to that point and can still render them to an MP4. Failures make good films too.
Does it work on an A1 or A1 mini, where the bed moves?
Yes. On an A1 or A1 mini the bed moves in Y, but while the toolhead runs back and forth across a wide prime tower the bed sits at essentially one Y, so the print does not slide through the frame. On the CoreXY X1 and P1 the bed never moves laterally at all.
Which printers work?
Bambu Lab in LAN mode: A1, A1 mini, P1 and X1. SliceLapse talks to the printer's own MQTT broker, and that payload shape is Bambu-specific, so non-Bambu printers are not supported.
How long is the finished timelapse?
Around fifteen seconds. SliceLapse works the frame rate out from how many frames it captured, so a 200-layer print and a 3,000-layer print both come out watchable. Encoding happens on the phone with its own hardware encoder: no ffmpeg, no upload.
Does it cost anything?
No. SliceLapse is free. There is no account to make and no card to enter; the beta list wants an email address and nothing else. What it costs you is a phone you can leave pointing at the plate, and a little filament for the prime tower.
How do I get it?
Join the beta list at the foot of this page; there is no public release on either platform yet. On Android that leads somewhere concrete: SliceLapse is on a Google Play closed testing track, so your address goes on the tester list and you install it from Play like anything else. On iPhone it is a waitlist for now. The iOS build works, but with no App Store listing and no TestFlight there is nothing to install from yet.