Additive Manufacturing Software

Digit is built to help you track multiple inventory types, including raw materials like powders and filaments. 

Setting this up works no differently than any other raw material item, and here’s how you can track it using Digit. First, set up the item in the system. To do this, open Operations, then select Items. Choose your default unit of measurement, and Digit will track your items going forward. 

If you want to be able to link your powders and filaments to production, you’ll need to add them to a Bill of Materials within Digit and define the exact amounts that are needed to finish a product build. 

Once you have the BOM set up and the materials properly linked, every time a manufacturing order is generated, the powders and materials are automatically committed to production, and your available inventory levels will decrease. If you need to perform an audit or would like to do an inventory count, you can check your inventory levels via Inventory under the Operations screen, where you’ll be able to see how much inventory is available and what’s already committed to production. 

You can schedule 3D printing jobs within Digit by setting up your workstations and printers as equipment in the software, so they can be included in a production step. 

If you want to do this, you’ll first need to open the Equipment tab and add your printers as equipment. Once all the printers have been saved to Digit, you can link them as an operational step under an item’s Routing. With this, when you create a manufacturing order, your operators will know which printer to use to complete a production run. 

In additive manufacturing, the ability to track and see the manufacturing history of a component or subassembly is referred to as part traceability. 

This is done by using a tool or software that keeps a complete digital record of how a product gets manufactured (not just updating its quantities after production runs). For this to work properly, you will need a solution that can: 

• Connect the design file and its revisions
• Record the origin and history of the materials used
• Save the machine and parameters involved in the build
• Document the build conditions
• Recognize the operators and actions taken
• Save any post-processing steps the part went through afterward 

Traceability solutions built to support the additive manufacturing industry typically include serialized inventory functionality. If a tool has this feature, it assigns a unique identification number or code to an item, so it can easily track it through production, inventory, and sales using that identifier. 

Digit is a solution that supports part traceability through labels. So, every serialized item gets a label that identifies either a specific unit or batch, and operators can use a barcode scanner to track it as it moves through each production step. 

Serialized tracking and full end-to-end traceability are important because they are necessary for tracing: 

• Warranty claims
• Repairs
• Quality issues

Beyond that, serialization is a legal requirement in some industries and is needed to help quickly launch recalls or perform investigations into defective products.

Digit tracks machine utilization and build failure rates using two separate features.

For machine utilization, you start by setting up your machines: 

• Open Settings
• Head to Production 
• Select Equipment

With that open, you can add each one as its own equipment item. 

From there, you assign each piece of equipment to the specific routing steps where it's actually used, so the system knows which machines are eligible for which operations. When a worker starts a Work Order, they select the specific equipment they're using for that run. This gives you a record of exactly which machine ran each job. Note that more advanced scheduling features, like automatic load-balancing across machines, are still being developed.

For build failure rates, the tracking works through the yield percentage. 

On the item's Production tab, enable Show yield % to turn on yield tracking for that item. Once enabled, Digit calculates it automatically using the following formula: 

Yield % = Target Quantity ÷ Output Quantity × 100. 

You can see this figure directly on both Manufacturing Orders and Work Orders, and it updates live as production happens, so you always have a current view of how a run is performing.

If you want to go deeper than what's shown in the app, you can export the underlying tables to CSV from Reports and calculate failure rates externally with your own analysis.