Questions
Everything people ask us.
Short answers. If you want the long version, everything is documented in the open.
- What is TigerTag?
- A tiny NFC chip in a spool of filament that carries its identity: brand, material, colour, diameter, print settings. Tap it with your phone and everything is filled in — no account, no cloud. The same phone writes a chip too, for free.
- What is a filament manager, and do I need one?
- A filament manager is the app that remembers what filament you own: brand, material, colour, print temperatures, and how much is left on each spool. Without one you guess, and you print black PLA at the settings of a different black PLA. Tiger Studio is a free one, and it goes further than most: a single inventory across every brand you own, live status and cameras for printers from six manufacturers, and NFC spool reading so a spool describes itself instead of being typed in. It works with no chip at all — you can add your spools by hand today.Read the full guide →
- Do I need to buy anything to start?
- No. Any NFC phone reads a TigerTag, and the apps are free. The only thing you ever buy is a blank NTAG 213/215/216 — a few cents, from anywhere — and it stays rewritable forever, so it isn't even a consumable.
- Does it work with my printer?
- Yes — with any of them. Your phone or a reader does the reading, and the apps hand the data to the printer, so no RFID reader is needed in the machine. Tiger Studio drives six brands live: Bambu Lab, Creality, Anycubic, Elegoo, FlashForge and Snapmaker.
- Is it free?
- Yes. Reading is free and works offline, the apps cost nothing, the protocol is open and the registry is public. There is no subscription and nothing is locked behind an account.
- Do I need an account or the cloud?
- No. A TigerTag carries everything on the chip itself, so it works with no account, no network and no server — even a TigerTag+ verifies its origin locally, with no internet at all. The cloud only adds optional comfort: sync between your devices, sharing, backup.
- Which filament brands ship it from the factory?
- Six today: Rosa3D, eSun, Sunlu, Landu, JamgHE and R3D — more than 2,500,000 chips already in the field, announced by the brands themselves on their own channels. Filforme and Nanovia are integrating it now. The public catalogue already lists 8 852 referenced materials.
- TigerData, TigerTag, TigerTag+ — what's the difference?
- TigerData is a spool tracked in the apps with nothing stuck on it, and TigerData+ is the same spool picked straight from the catalogue, so nothing is typed. Write that identity onto a chip and it becomes a TigerTag: physical, offline, readable by anything that reads NFC. TigerTag+ adds the backup that proves the spool's origin and puts the chip back to its factory state if it's ever wiped.Compare the four, side by side →
- What if my spool has no tag?
- Add one yourself with any blank NTAG, or track the spool with no chip at all — that's TigerData: a fully digital spool you can turn into a real tag whenever you like.
- Can my phone write a chip, or only read one?
- It writes. Tiger NFC Connect reads AND writes a TigerTag with the phone's own NFC, free, with no reader to buy. A computer with any ACR122U reader is the other route — handy for a batch, or for both twin chips at once.
- What happens when the spool is empty?
- The tag isn't finished. Rewrite it for a refill, or turn it into an ordinary NFC tag — a link, a contact card, a home-automation trigger. Two reusable chips per kilo printed, instead of e-waste.
- Is TigerTag open?
- Yes. The protocol is published with an irrevocable right to implement it, the data format and the SDKs are public on GitHub, and the tag reader designs are free to print. Nobody has to ask us for permission — including the brands that ship it.
- Am I locked into TigerTag?
- No — chips are never write-locked. TigerTag is simply the protocol a spool ships with: you're free to rewrite the chip and move its data to any other NFC protocol, ours or not. The other open formats are allies, not rivals.
- What if TigerTag disappeared tomorrow?
- Your spools keep working. The chip format is public, a chip reads offline forever with no server in the loop, the SDKs and the desktop app are open source, and the cloud side is documented. Nothing here can be bricked from a distance — that's the point of an open protocol.
- I make filament. How do I ship TigerTag?
- A production line can be running TigerTag in as little as five days, each chip written in about one second, at very low cost — there's no R&D on your side. Talk to us.
Still curious?
The full FAQ — chips, apps, printers, developers, manufacturers — is documented in the open, and the community is on Discord.