Creating 3D Printing Room

To change the current office room into a 3d printing area, freeing up considerable space in the main work area

Office -> 3D printing room

Current situation

• Often a dumping ground and graveyard for dead silicon.
• With the possible fixing of the shutters and that room becoming the main entrance again, it's not a welcoming first impression
• Often new potential members come to join the space and we're not really geared up for giving them something to do. Offering them the ability to find a design and send it to print could be easy enough to document on the wiki.

Future State

• All 3D (and other) printers in this room
  • All printers accessible over network
  • Webcam(s)?
  • Potential to kill power remotely may be helpful
• Could also have the ultrasonic cleaner and resin printing finisher in here
• 1 Computer for use in the room. Maybe Windows/ linux dual boot.
• Display area for interesting 3D prints?
• That plan is to put servers upstairs but, should that not work out somehow, this would be the obvious room for them

Storage of media

• Need to consider whether there's something clever to do around feeding the machines with plastic (high level). Though shorter runs are less error prone and swapping reels of PLA is much less annoying that a print feed jamming 3 hours into a print
  • In theory it's hydroscopic, not sure how much this matters in practice
• Cupboards/ other for storing material? A rod? How does is not become a dumping ground for other things

Software

Web Software

To allow control printer through a webpage, rather than

• Personal experience with Octoprint and it's already on the deltamaker and Geetech printer. Can run mulptiple instances from one machine
  • Need to test how this works in practice with limited power of pi
• https://www.repetier.com/?
• Paul's Phrozen resin printer comes with it's own webpage/ slicer

Design

To be discussed, what do you want? Some ideas:

• Fusion 360 - can we get a legal license through being education?
• Freecad
• Openscad
• Blender
• Solvespace
• Inkscape
• Qcad

Slicing and other

• Ponterface (costume to each printer: specially zombie)
• Octoprint
• Cura
• Slic3r
• 3D simplify is paid for but we can get a discount
• Meshlab

Suggested timescale

• EE waste gone early/ mid december
• Servers relocated to loft Mid decemeber
• Work space created over Christmas period if people have timeoff work/ willing

Ongoing

Layout

• 

  Office Layout empty

• 

  Proposal 1 (amunizp)

• 

  Quick Renders

• 
• 

  View from out

• 

• Andres SVG file with layers for options [[1]]
• Andres also has the Home Sweet Home 3D file for doing layout with 3D printer dimensions loaded internal link to BOM pdf

3D Printing shelf space

All should be given 500 mm depth: This is because cables and material reels, but the deepest is the zombie printer. There should be space under the shelves for storing parts and materials. There should be desk space to be able to remove the printer from the rack for maintance. Or in the case of the resin printers if not enough clearance to remove the cover. Resin printers might need to sit on their own desk for this reason: cover needs to be removed every time the part is finished.

Resin cures under UV light. Part of the process of cleaning after the 3D resin print is to expose it to UV light (shilac nail box is enough £20 ). It also needs either a detergent wash of IPA wash. So location near an open window (natural UV light) Dimensions are approximate in mm Height  :

Name	Height (mm)	Width (mm)
Zombie: prusa? reprap type (FDM)	500	500
Biqu delta reprap (FDM)	500	300
Original Delta delta reprap (FDM)	900	500
GEEtech delta reprap (double FDM)	900	400
Phrozen (resin)	500+350 clearance	350
Formlabs 2 (resin)	560+350 clearance	400

Maintenace

• Any processes needed around this?
• Test prints run every <X period>
• Calibration etc
• Will need a work table to be able to give maintance to printers off the shelf
• Will need to check that not too many things are plugged into the same machine few plugs

Tuition

• Opportunities for teaching of 3D printing and design. Who's in for teaching or learning?

Costs

• Wood for benches/ cupboards/ shelves/ racks etc.
• Any tools needed
• Computer/ Pis for serving through website - TBC
  • Sonoff devices with tasmota software for relay AC power control
• Software licenses?

Tasks

• Clearing_EE_waste_in_Office
• Design of room (CAD or paper)
• Volunteers for making the room and getting materials transported
  • Any tools borrowed/ bought for this?
• Technical skills - Andy's mostly ok with this but if anyone wants to help/ learn

Health - Ventilation

• Various discussions on the long term effects of 3d printers online. e.g. [2]]
  • We are putting a lot of them in a small space and may need ventilation
  • We need to assume we use all types (e.g. PLA, ABS, resin)
• Any warning signs necessary?
• Fire extinguisher/ Kill buttons for power?

Temperature/ Server relocation

• Whilst I was looking to move servers to the loft, 3D printing is largely benefited by higher temperatures.
  • Do we benefit by keeping the servers in this room (where it can be noisy anyway) and give people a warm entrance to RML
  • Can we build a locked server rack into this design - or are the servers too noisy? Input ventilation from outside, through servers into room, and then extract from room back outside?
  • If we're ventilating this area anyway- 2 birds 1 stone
    • With the door opening/ closing and our great British Weather - to what extent can we deal with seasonal temperature extremes

Power

Might be interesting to get a sense of what power multiple printers/ servers will come to on one circuit

Questions

• What, if anything, do we want to keep from the current room?
• Unhackable (?!) - should a couple of printers be marked as unhackable e.g. they should a reasonable expectation of working
  • of course they go wrong sometimes
• Others, whilst are fine for playing with as you wish, should have cables replaced etc/ left in a working state
• Resin printers seem to make everything else around them sticky if not careful. Is there anything we can do about this or has that just built up over time.
• Security - a lot of valuable toys in a unmanned location is this a concern?
  • We have cameras now. People wear caps