Tracking filament inventory
Hi makers,
Being part of a student team is an exciting adventure. However, as a technical manager, I have encountered the issue of keeping track of our filament's usage and inventory.
I was wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same issue and how people actually manage to solve this problem? I know an app called Spoolstock, but doing everything by hand is very very tedious. I also know the creality digital spool holder, but that's even worse of a solution.
Thanks guys
- Alex
RE: Tracking filament inventory
I've just started using Spoolman: https://github.com/Donkie/Spoolman
It has an API that can be used to update filament remaining.
RE: Tracking filament inventory
Thanks for the reply! What have your experiences been so far? What was the reason for you to choose such a filament tracking program?
Thanks again!
RE: Tracking filament inventory
Is 'because someone I follow on Mastodon posted about it and I thought it was a neat idea' a good answer? 😋
What I realised was that I kept forgetting what filament I had loaded in my XL5T, and what nozzle size was installed. I've used the 'extra fields' feature for each spool to add 'loaded', 'tool#' & 'nozzle' that means I can now quickly look that up. The trick is going to be keeping that up to date...
It was a bit of a pain to put in all the manufactures/filament types ant then create each spool. Hopefully that bulk data insert is now done and just adding the odd new spool won't be so tedious. Also, I have not made any effort to calculate what filament length/weight each spool has left on it (yet). I'm just using it as a look-up database.
Bonus for me was that there is already an HomeAssistant Integration so I can display what filaments I have on my HA dashboard.
Antony