I know this is old news, but we’ve been down to 1 workstation in the 3D Fabrication room for some time now. What’s the remediation plan for facilitating access to our 6 ABS printers and when is the targeted remediation date? 1 workstation is not sufficient to efficiently access 6 printers when there is a crowd trying to print.
If Kisslicer and some design software were readily accessible on workstations in the room where Stan usually sits (don’t know the name of the room), this would greatly reduce the time spent by individuals at the single workstation in the 3D Fab room. Similar to how the Laser workstations are managed, it would be nice if design work occurred on workstations elsewhere, and the workstations in the 3D Fab room were used to merely set up (in Octoprint) and send jobs to the printers.
The room you refer to is usually called “the open area” or “common area”. There are work stations in the works and will be located by the exit to that room/area. Coul @Coul, Digital Media Chair, is heading this effort. Think set up/deployment will happen soon. They will be for editing/design work only. No surfing, social media bs, streaming, etc. Edit your file, save to your personal folder on server, call up it on pc in 3d fab. Or shove file out to usb and sneakernet it down the hall.
This sounds like a good approach. One edit I would make to the proposed process is the use of online use/searches to find and download print files from sites like Yeggi or Thingiverse.
Good point. Would probably depend on demand for the work stations. Best practice is come prepared the best you can. Get your search done, load file(s) to server, usb, etc., get on work station ready to rock n roll.
For computers that have had kiss slicer and octoprint on them for the past 2 months now they are all on the computers in the common room yes we only have one computer in that room that computer should it be only for starting prints on the printers and 4 classes
Honestly there probably ought to be a least two in there, just for the number of printers. Even if folks make sure to only use the computer(s) in the room for managing prints, it still takes time to load files, get printer up to temp, and start the job.
I agree with Alex on needing more workstation access in the 3D Fab room to facilitate loading jobs across six ABS 3D Printers. A 1:6 ratio of workstations to printers is a far cry from the 1:1 workstation ratio in place at the laser area.
This workstation/device ratio become even more concerning when you apply ‘time and motion’ analysis across the laser and 3D Fab areas. The average time to load and send a file to the lasers via the RD Works software is probably less than a minute, not counting materials and optics prep. time. Then it’s probably closer to 3 minutes on average.
The average time to load filament, then pull up the printer via Octoprint, get the printer bed and nozzle to temp. and then extrude the previous users’ filament from the nozzle takes probably close to 5 minutes. And this still assumes that the user has used one of the other workstations located in the common room to slice their object and create g-code.
This time and motion analysis affirms the value of multiple workstations in the 3D Fab room. Probably 3 at a minimum, and if you take the data comparison of 1:1 laser/workstation ratio x 3 minutes per avg. job vs. 1:6 3D Printer/workstation ratio x 5 minutes per avg. job, it makes the argument MUCH stronger for more workstations being located in 3D Fab.
You got 5 computers to work from. Could do what I originally wanted and take out all computers in there… fill it with printers. Nothing but printers. Just printers in 3d fab.
Okay, so we’ve determined that the current idea is that there will be (or currently are) 5 workstations available, with all but one workstation located outside of the 3D Fab room, down the hall in the common room. Is the assumption that members should send print commands to the Polyprinters from the common room workstations? Or are the workstations in the common room meant to facilitate ‘design and slice’ activities? If the answer is to send print commands to the printers from the common room, then the multi-step process for getting a job started mentioned earlier becomes a bigger hassle (back and forth a few times from the workstation in the common room to the 3D Fab room to load filament/begin heating/extrude/clean extrusion/execute job.
If the notion is that the single workstation in the 3D Fab room should be used to accomodate these ‘Octoprint’ functions for all 6 polyprinters on a busy weekend, then there’s still a queuing problem that needs to be resolved.
While the proposal for getting Octoprint to work from member laptops is a good idea, I think it wrongly assumes that all members have a laptop. Not all do.
Maybe I’m missing something, but the queuing issue appears to still exist, given the solution described above. The design and slice issue looks to be addressed, but not the job submission process.
UTA FAblab has an open source version of octoprint that uses the school ID badges to start printing. On start it prints a receipt with a ton of info on it. It’s got everything we are looking for in 3d printer control systems. It’s on GitHub
I keep seeing that people think the printer needs to warm up before you can hit print. This isn’t true.
All you have to do if filament is loaded is- load your file. Hit print.
The gcode takes care of all the warm up and you don’t have to touch the computer after you hit print. This process shouldn’t take anywhere near 5 mins.
If filament is needed all you have to do is warm up the extruder. Takes less than 60 seconds. After that load file, hit print.
The order of operations you describe is not what the vast majority of members are doing, based on my observations on the time I’ve been a member. Most everybody extrudes right before printing, and only after both bed and nozzle come to temp. Then they will start their job. I’m happy to take timings on what people are doing at the 1 workstation in the print room to get an average time across a predefined time window. It’s substantially longer than 1 minute currently.