Part traceability embedded onto prints#845

Currently, once a part is inspected and taken off the plate, it becomes difficult to track down the cause if we later discover an issue with it. Further down the line, if a customer gets a defective part, there’s very little that can be done to trace why it happened.

The solution is to automatically mark each part with a UID that lets you look up the print job it came from. This lets the you see everything you need to diagnose and fix the issue. You can see the printer, slicer settings, spool, timestamp, etc.

Examples:

• If you get a part back that cracked, you can check to see how long ago it was printed along with how old the filament was at the time.
• If there’s a layer separation issue, you can see if maybe the wrong filament was used, causing a temperature mismatch.
• If you’re shipping orders and come across a part with mising layer lines, you can easily find the printer it was printed on and check the extruder assembly.

To implement this, SimplyPrint could generate a UID and place it on the parts when starting a print, then once a print is in progress, assign that UID to the print job.