Inventory Spool Creation

Inventory & Spool Creation

Printbuddy's inventory tools help you track filament spools, assign them to printers, and keep material usage more accurate over time.

This page covers the Open Filament Database integration and the newer spool creation helpers.

Open Filament Database support

Printbuddy can optionally search Open Filament Database when creating new inventory spools.

Open Filament Database, often shortened to OFDB, is used as a filament catalog source. It can prefill spool details such as brand, material, filament name, colour or variant information, diameter, and other metadata when that data is available upstream.

OFDB is a catalog source, not a slicer preset database. That means an OFDB-created spool may not always have a matching slicer filament preset. Printbuddy allows that intentionally so catalog-based spool records can still be created even when the slicer profile has to be selected manually later.

Enable Open Filament Database

1. Open Settings / Profiles.
2. Go to the Open Filament Database API tab.
3. Enable Search spools via Open Filament Database.
4. Save the setting.

After this is enabled, the spool creation form can show the OFDB search section.

Create a spool from OFDB

1. Go to Inventory.
2. Click Add Spool.
3. In the filament section, enable Search via Open Filament Database.
4. Search and select the filament in this order:
   1. Brand
   2. Material
   3. Filament
   4. Variant / colour / size, depending on the available OFDB data
5. Review the prefilled spool fields.
6. Adjust anything that does not match your physical spool.
7. Save the spool.

Depending on the OFDB entry, Printbuddy may prefill fields such as:

• Brand
• Material
• Filament name or subtype
• Colour / variant
• Diameter
• Weight-related metadata
• Temperature hints, where available
• Data origin

OFDB-created spools are marked internally as coming from openfilamentdatabase. In assignment and search views they can also show an OFDB badge, making them easier to identify.

Slicer preset behaviour

A manually created spool usually needs enough data to match it against the slicer and printer workflow.

For OFDB-created spools, the slicer preset can be optional because OFDB does not guarantee a one-to-one match with Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer, or other slicer profile names.

Recommended approach:

• Use OFDB to prefill the real filament identity.
• Select a slicer preset manually if you already know the correct one.
• Leave the slicer preset empty if there is no safe match yet.
• Review assignment warnings when assigning the spool to a printer slot.

Printbuddy will not pretend that an OFDB catalog entry is automatically the same thing as a slicer preset.

Create multiple identical spools

The spool form includes a Quantity field when creating a new spool.

Use this when you bought several identical spools and want Printbuddy to create them in one step.

Example:

Brand: Elegoo
Material: PLA
Colour: Black
Net weight: 1000 g
Quantity: 4

Printbuddy creates four matching spool entries instead of requiring you to submit the same form four times.

The quantity field is intended for new spool creation. It is not shown when editing or copying an existing spool.

Spoolman empty spool weight

When Printbuddy is running in Spoolman mode, the spool creation form can include an optional Empty Spool Weight field.

This value is written to Spoolman as the individual spool's empty weight. Use it when you know the real empty spool or core weight for the physical spool.

Examples:

Cardboard spool: 140 g
Plastic spool:   250 g
Master spool:    measured empty weight

Leave the field blank if you want Spoolman to use its filament or manufacturer default.

Setting the empty spool weight improves remaining-weight and gross-weight calculations, especially when different brands use different spool weights.

Recommended workflow

For clean inventory entries:

1. Enable OFDB in Profiles → Open Filament Database API.
2. Go to Inventory → Add Spool.
3. Use Search via Open Filament Database to prefill filament details.
4. Select the closest variant, colour, and size.
5. Set Quantity if you are adding multiple identical spools.
6. If using Spoolman, enter the measured Empty Spool Weight when known.
7. Review weight, colour, material, and slicer preset.
8. Save the spool.

This gives you faster spool creation, better metadata, cleaner assignment/search behaviour, and less manual typing.