Filament

Filament has two layers: the individual spools you own, each with its own remaining weight, storage location and notes, and a catalog of the filament types you buy again (brand, material, colour, full-roll weight, price). You do not need the catalog to start: add each spool you own with New filament. The catalog is for restocks: when one arrives, you add spools against a catalog entry instead of retyping the details. The Filament page shows the spools, a weight split by brand, material and colour, and a weight split by material type. The Free plan holds 10 spools in use and Pro 100 (archived spools do not count); Farm is unlimited.

Filament catalog on the Filament page opens the catalog dialog. Add a type with its brand, material, colour, roll weight (the net filament on a full spool), unit price and a low-stock threshold. Notes and a filament number belong to each individual spool, not to the type. Search SpoolmanDB, a public community database of filaments, to fill brand, material, colour, colour hex and weight in one go. A catalog type has no diameter, so spools added from it are saved as 1.75 mm: for 2.85 mm filament, open each new spool and set its diameter. From a catalog entry, add several spools at once: FoxTrack copies the type's details and you only enter what is spool-specific. Labels for the type can be printed from the same dialog.

New filament asks for a spool number (auto-assigned on save), brand, material, colour (with a swatch), Filament left in grams (what is on the spool now; left blank on a new spool, it saves as a full spool), diameter in mm, Full spool weight in grams (the filament on a new full roll, used to work out the cost per gram), Empty spool weight in grams (what the spool weighs with no filament on it, for weighing; picking a SpoolmanDB entry fills it when the database lists it), a low-stock threshold in grams, unit price, last dried date, storage location and notes. Brand, material and colour together are what group spools into a type for thresholds, charts and alerts. With the AI assistant connected and its Offer drafts permission on, you can also paste a whole stock list into chat and add the spools from the rows it shows you.

Each spool tracks the grams of filament left on it. Log usage on the Filament page: pick the spool (search by spool number, brand, material or colour), then either keep I know what it used and type what the print used in Used (g), or choose I weighed it and type what the scale says in Weighed (g). When the spool has an Empty spool weight set, FoxTrack takes it off for you; without one, take the empty spool off the reading yourself. Grams left shows what FoxTrack will save, and you can type it there directly. When open orders have already taken grams from the spool, the dialog says so (820 g on the spool, 1105 g promised to open orders) and what the scale should read, and I weighed it takes those grams off what you type. Log usage can also update the last dried date and the storage location. Each row also has minus and plus buttons for quick corrections. Orders that consume filament through a bill of materials or a line's materials reduce the spool automatically when saved; usage logged by hand is for prints outside an order. Accurate weights keep the low-stock alerts useful.

Saving an order takes the filament its lines need straight away, before anything is printed. So FoxTrack shows two figures, for example 820 g on the spool, 1105 g promised to open orders:

• On the spool is what is physically there now, the figure your scale agrees with. It is the On the spool column on the Filament page.
• Promised is what saved orders have already taken from it for prints still to come, shown under that figure.

On the Filament page, Low and Out of stock go by what is on the spool, so a full spool held by orders no longer reads Out of stock. On the spool's form, the Filament left box is the free part, what new work can still use, and its hint gives both figures. Log usage lists spools by what is on them and says what is promised, what is free and what the scale should read.

When a spool runs short for an order, the rest comes from other spools of the same brand, material and colour (fullest first). The spool's form lists that under Covered by other spools, such as ORD-0401: 120 g covered by FIL-0029.

Open a spool and press History (top right of the form) to see every change to its weight, newest first: grams taken for an order (with Open order), grams given back when an order changed or was deleted, grams used by a restock run, grams taken because another spool ran out, failed prints, weights logged by hand, API changes and the weight the spool started with (Opening balance). Each row has its date and amount, and the sheet shows what is on the spool now. It lists the latest 100 changes.

An empty or retired spool can be archived instead of deleted, so its history stays. Open the spool and press Archive at the foot of the form. It leaves the Filament list, the low-stock maths and the spool pickers on orders, products and Log usage; its stock history and the orders that used it stay as they were. To see archived spools, turn on Show archived next to the search box; they show an Archived chip. Open one and press Unarchive to bring it back; right after archiving, the message also offers Undo. Archived spools do not count towards your plan's spool limit, so archiving a finished spool makes room for a new one. Unarchiving a spool while you are at the limit is refused until you archive another one or upgrade. Archiving is written to the activity log.

The low-stock threshold in grams applies to every spool of the same brand, material and colour; changing it on one updates them all. When the type's spools together fall to or below the threshold, the Filament page shows a popup with the per-spool breakdown and the bell gets a Low stock: filament notification. To turn the warnings off for a type, clear the threshold on any of its spools and save: it clears on every spool of that type. A new spool of a type that has a threshold takes it over.

Storage location (Shelf A3, dry box 2) helps you find rolls. Last dried records when you last dried the spool. Notes hold spool diameter, supplier, print settings or anything else you want to remember. All three show on the spool, and you can update the storage location and last dried date when you log usage.

Each spool has a label button that downloads a QR label; scanning it opens the spool in FoxTrack (sign-in required) so you can adjust the weight at the printer. Search matches brand, material, colour and spool number. Import loads spools from a CSV file with brand, material, colour, colour hex, diameter, quantity, spool weight, unit price, threshold, storage location and notes columns.

Delete on a spool removes it and its stock record after a confirmation; it cannot be undone. Deleting from the list, one or many at a time, is for owners and admins.

A spool that a product uses in its materials (bill of materials) cannot be deleted: that would take it out of those products, so their cost and their stock use would change without notice. The form names the products and offers Archive instead. Deleting several spools from the list deletes the others, says how many were kept and offers to archive those. To keep an empty spool's history, or to free a slot under your plan's spool limit, archive it (see Archiving a spool).