3D Prints for Other Teams
By Malak Alamad (Design and Manufacturing) | Fall 2017 | Sojourner Team
Introduction:
Since the groups began working on their solid works models, many 3D prints have been made. I have access to a 3D printer at work at no cost, so for budgeting reasons, I have been helping the other groups by doing some of their printing for them.
Discussion:
There have been different versions of SolidWorks modeling sent to me and anytime my classmates needed anything, I would get it printed when I was at work. This went on for a few weeks and I did my all to aid my fellow classmates. Last week I had many prints sent to me from a couple projects and I was experiencing some technical difficulties with the printers. The filament wasn’t feeding properly, and the bases weren’t leveled. We only have four printers in the lab at work, and two of them weren’t functional, so I had to redo the setup for the prints to compress 3 prints into two printers. After editing the files, replacing the filament, and calibrating the printer, they still were not working. I redid everything I had already done to ensure that the prints can get started. That day I was in the lab from 3 pm to 11 pm, just trying to fix the printers. By the end of the night, I was finally able to get them running. I went in the next morning, and for some unknown reason, none of the prints were usable. The filament was off, and they looked badly. After the extended use of these printer, I believe that they are no longer reliable to print out the needed parts for the projects. At this point, we are all contacting Ridwan, since the finishing would look better from him anyway.
Conclusion:
I put in a lot of effort to help the other projects, and it all came down to a technical difficulty. I have alerted the lab manager to let him know that the printers are not functional. I did everything in my power to do as much as I can for the projects, but I can no longer be a resource to get prints done for them. I hope I can get credit for helping out my fellow classmates on my own time.