Outreach with a 3D Printer

A public library having a 3D printer for free use to the public still wows our community.

I had the opportunity to show off TWO of our Lulzbot Minis! During a recent Tool Library Meeting, I reconnected with the Neighborhood Liaison for City of Vancouver.  He connected me with a member of the Watershed Monitoring Network, who is working with the City of Vancouver Water Resource Center for Second Saturday. They were very interested in having the library at their July Second Satruday: Design Zone Day -- Engineer Your Creativity. Event description:

Explore your creativity with the Water Resources Education Center’s new exhibition – Design Zone! July’s Second Saturday event will become ‘Design Zone Day,’ and allow inquisitive minds to engineer and explore their own creativity. Design Zone is a highly interactive, hands-on exhibition where visitors can explore concepts highlighting the importance of science and mathematical thinking in areas critical to building creativity and innovation, especially in art, music and engineering. The expanded Second Saturday event, from 1 to 4 p.m., offers time to explore the Design Zone exhibit and also participate in design challenges, demonstrations and hands-on science-based learning.

Design Zone is presented at the Water Center with partner, JACOBS, and will be on display through the end of August. The Water Center is free to the public with general hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Friday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. The creation of Design Zone was made possible by the generous support of the National Science Foundation. The exhibition was produced and is toured by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI).

I loaded up my Chevy Sonic with an A/V cart and two of our minis (Freddie Prints Jr. and FRVLibraries, if you care to know) and drove them down to the Center. We had a great spot inside their air-conditioned building with the local high school robotics club, Repair Clark County, and JACOBS.

For this event, I wanted to demonstrate the practicality of 3D printing.  And I also wanted a print that would be (relatively) quick. I chose these gecko earbud holders. Our minis can print two every ~56 minutes, so I printed 50 beforehand and produced 12 more during the event.

Along with the earbuds patrons could take, I made sure to have some neat examples on-hand, including the Raptor Reloaded, spiral vase, fish fossilz, and the chessmen from the British Museum.

My conversations with the public included a discussion of how they can get access to print their own things (through Intro to 3D Design, Open Lab, and Certification) as well as the types of things other certified users have created. In addition to the many families I spoke with, I made contacts with the Boys & Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts of America, and UL to work on partnerships to create learning opportunities for their groups.

I love these types of outreach events and the second look people give the 3D printer after I tell them they can learn how to use the equipment for themselves for free.

3D Printing Museum Artifacts

While preparing for Hello, Vancouver from The Forum at the Library, I wanted to print something new that helps illustrate the practicality of 3D printers. I decided it was time to dig into museum prints.

I heard about museum scans two or three years ago, but hadn't really spent the time to see how they came off the printer. 

While searching online, I found 3D Printing resources for the British Museum, Met Museum of Art, as well as educational resources.  I don't think I'll have any shortage of useful objects to print.

For this week's presentation, I started work on the British Museum's Lewis Chessmen. The original file was a complete set of chessmen. It was also tiny, so I scaled it up. It failed once, so I printed again with a raft, but it failed again.

After poking around, I did find the individual models. I started with the queen. When I loaded the model into Cura, she was tiny, so I scaled her up 30%.  Then I noticed she was at a bit of an angle, so I rotated her around so she was standing up with a raft, and she did alright.

I printed her bro (the King) next.  He was also tiny and at a funny angle. I got him oriented to print standing up...

Little bit of a gap...

Still doing okay...

He failed.

So I rotated him onto his back and the print went a little faster. They still took ~2.5 hours a piece.

I made sure to print this information from the British Museum. I enjoy having them as a talking piece to help people realize that students may never have the opportunity to visit these items in their museum, but we can bring a little bit of the museum experience into our classrooms (and libraries)!

Hello Vancouver from the Forum at the Library

The building I work in is celebrating its 7th Birthday in July, so we hosted Hello, Vancouver as part of our series, Forum at the Library. The episode title is "How Libraries are Changing Lives and Embracing the Future." I guess I was "the Future" segment.

I had the opportunity to meet Washington State Librarian, Cindy Aden and talk to her for a bit about the Virtual Reality headsets I eagerly volunteered to demo later this year.

During my segment, we focused mostly on the 3D printers, which I had demoing during the program. I loved being a part of this and spoke to many eager community members following the program. 

OctoPrint

Earlier this summer, I was tasked with learning how OctoPrint works with our Lulzbot Minis to see if we could set up a feasible system for the rest of the district. IT really wanted to use Raspberry Pi instead of dedicated laptops for the printers. We will be rolling these out to branches who may or may not have anyone on staff with experience using the district's printer.  I wanted to make sure we provide quality training for these branches and had a clear set of instructions with how the Pi works.

The first challenge was to decide what our goal is for 3D printing at our branches. I met with my senior assistant that handles the bulk of 3D printing for the public in our branch, as well as my colleague at a nearby branch, and the district's program coordinator.  We all agreed our ultimate goal was to use the printers as a teaching tool for the public.

We worked at our branches with the Pis to see what we could and couldn't do. OctoPrint worked really well if we had straightforward prints that didn't need a lot of manipulation to print. We did quickly come upon quite a few challenges to using OctoPrint for our printer interface in addition to the Cura slicing software:

• d be nice to be able to see the object on the bed before printing (not just gcode layers)
• I can't figure out how to load multiple objects into one print (unless I slice it in Cura first)
• I can't fine tune the extruder and bed temps to fix poor print quality
• I have identified the need for 36 printer profiles to load based on filament/bed temps, 
  platform adhesion, and support structure
• I can't figure out how to send print jobs as a patron (not signed in to admin)
• I can only have 29GB loaded into OctoPrint at a time (~20 print jobs)
• Octoprint disconnects, cannot be reconnected ~45 minutes
• I can’t figure out how to resize an object
• I tried to load a file with supports and resizing, but OctoPrint froze (see IT Ticket 1610). 
  Error received: “The server at va3dprinter02.fvrl.org is taking too long to respond.”
• I can’t troubleshoot print fails in OctoPrint. I have to reslice the object in Cura and then 
  re-load the object to OctoPrint and hope for the best.
• Sometimes OctoPrint will begin printing object, but will not extrude filament; 
  manual extrusion works fine
   

At this point, we've come to the conclusion that it will be easier for staff and patrons to learn about this technology through a dedicated laptop or computer that connects directly to the printer, rather than adding an RPi to communicate with the printer. I could see use for an RPi if our libraries get to a point where we have production machines in addition to our teaching printer. 

Stevenson Community Library

Today I had the opportunity to help out at another branch in my library system. The Stevenson Community Library is nestled in the Columbia River Gorge and circulated ~53k items/year.

They've been a bit short-staffed all summer and many of my library colleagues have taken a day at the branch. Today was my turn and I loved it!

I spent the entire day on desk and was able to personally engage with everyone who came into the branch. My favorite visitors were children visiting with their grandparents. I was able to engage in a lively discussion with several shy preteens who were forced to speak with me by their grandma. :D

 This branch recently had a remodel to add new decking and furniture.

 It has an amazing view of the Columbia River! During my afternoon break, I got to watch windsurfers enjoying the fine weather.