My library district owns 7 Lulzbot Minis. Initially, we had plans to create a centralized makerspace in our large downtown branch. When that didn't seem feasible, several other branches received 3D printers. We then set about coordinating our efforts to create a consistent process for getting the technology into the hands of our patrons.
My library district has been closed since March 15th. I've been keeping an eye on the maker initiatives growing out the of the need to support local healthcare agencies with Personal Protective Equipment and other items. I had a lot of concerns about the initial enthusiasm for creating PPE. My biggest concern was over makers creating these items without any oversight from healthcare agencies or an actual ask by healthcare agencies.
The NIH website has provided a lot of guidance during this process.
We were fortunate to be able to partner with our local Repair Cafe group, Repair Clark County. They started sewing cloth masks, and quickly expanded into other areas. We responded to their request for surgical mask extenders.
We're following safety best practices created by the Prusa 3D printing company. Wiping down the machines with disinfectant, wearing masks and gloves.
Our facilities crew has been keeping an eye on our branches, and they kindly rounded up all the printers and brought them to the Operations Center. I worked on getting them cleaned, calibrated and printing.
Feedback we received from the first batch of mask extenders was they were a bit short. I created an optimized version for the Lulzbot Mini, squeezing almost an extra inch out of the design by printing without build adhesion (no skirt).
Original size (left). Optimized Mini print (right).
We've only been printing a few days, but have already printed over 100 and I think I've got a system figured out to print faster. It takes about 20 minutes to print an extender on our Minis. Here is a timelapse of several hours' worth of printing compressed to 30 seconds:
We've done it! 2.5 months later than anticipated, but our 3D printing team of 16 staff members was able to get the on-demand 3D printer certification completed!
We finished reviewing the certification content at the beginning of May. I worked with our Communications and Marketing Department to put together a public page for the Library's website. That had to go through the printing team for feedback as well.
By some miracle, it all came together and we have a beautiful landing page for our Maker Tools (that can be expanded as we work on getting more equipment accessible to the public):
In my research for this project, I found that we are one of only a few libraries offering an on-demand certification. I am excited to see how it works out and evolves to meet our branch and community needs.
I am excited to take a break from 3D printing while I work my way through the Summer STEM program. BUT, I've already sent out a survey to our printing team so that we can get a meeting on the schedule at the end of August to check in on how this process is going and how the 3D printers are working out at the branches.
I am also turning my attention to creating an introduction for the downtown branch's Cricut Explore Air 2.
Our Library District recently purchased a Lulzbot Mini 2. I started working with it in March and just recently got it back from a branch. It seems to have survived its first adventure!
I am still learning about the Mini 2, which really needs a name, and trying to use up old filament printing some components for maker programs. I started printing some examples for an upcoming Repair Cafe at one of our branches to demonstrate something useful made with the printer. I found this watch band that I think would be awesome as I currently have a watch without a band! And, of course, why not use super glittery Proto-Pasta filament? The watch band actually printed out pretty smoothly, but the links fused together at the bottom and I snapped it apart. 😒
But! Before I could try again, the filament got jammed into the Mini 2 tool head... again! This has now happened every time I take the printer out to print something. I followed all the steps that helped me release the filament from the tool head the last few times this happened, but this time the filament just snapped off right at the idler...
I have been eyeing the screws on the side of the fan, thinking, I could take this apart. I could probably get that filament out of there and maybe put all this back together...
But the printer is new, so I sent an email to Lulzbot with a picture asking for their advice. Their reply:
I found this video from IT-Works 3D extremely helpful during my adventure:
I may have watched it...a lot.
The process of getting the tool head dismantled was relatively simple. It only takes one hex key, and Lulzbot sent me a set with the printer! The trickiest part was getting all the wires disconnected. Then the thing basically exploded apart...easy...
When I got to the filament, I had a nice long strand to grip and pull...and it snapped off at the top of the hot end. FML.
So, how do I get the last little bit of filament out of the hot end...? I've used a hair dryer to heat up PLA before. What did Program Services have that I could use to heat up the filament and/or metal to get the filament soft enough to pull out? I found a metal pointy stick and got some very hot water. I slowly, meticulously, started poking at the leftover filament to get it malleable enough to grab and pull out with the pointy end. This was not going well...
Then I turned around and saw a bunch of soldering irons still sitting at my desk from Outreach in April...
The soldering iron worked great...almost too good. It sort of liquified the PLA (gotta love that burning plastic smell) and I was able to scrape it all out. Yay! Mission Accomplished!
I re-assembled the tool head, only having a minor hiccup when I couldn't figure out how to run the wires so it wouldn't get tangled in anything...and remembering to plug the heater block back in.
I was super amazed that the printer turned on when it was all re-assembled!
But then the printer started making a terrible hissing sound and filament wouldn't load! I think the hissing sound was just leftover remnants of a filament burning off, but without new filament to push out whatever was left of the old filament, I couldn't do much about it. So, I stopped working on it for the day and decided to take a fresh look at it the next day.
I was hoping when I came in the next day, I'd get things wiggled around enough to get the filament to load into the hot end, but no such luck. So, I took the tool head apart again to get the filament guide set correctly. And this is when the real nightmare began!
The filament guide is a loose piece of a plastic tube that sits just below where the hob gear and idler meet. It guides the filament so it runs right into the hot end. Cool, cool cool. The 1.75 tool head apparently has a nice rigid guide that you can put in the hot end, the filament guide, and up through the idler so everything stays aligned when you reassemble it. Not so for the 3mm tool head on the Lulzbot Mini. 😠It is an intricate dance of keeping the filament guide in place while keeping the hob gear and idler aligned and shoving the heat block in place.
Ultimately, I got everything lined up with filament fed into all the pieces, used the screws to keep everything in place while I removed the filament, then plopped on the heat block and screwed it all back together. This really doesn't do justice to the 3 hours I fiddled to get everything lined up at the same time. 😂
I found this really cool document of the complete build of an E3 Titan Aero tool head. Apparently, building one from scratch only takes ~1 hour. Troubleshooting one took me ~8 hours. But I'm getting faster! If we have issues with the Version1, I feel very confident in tearing it apart!
Right now I'm printing an EEZYbotARM as a demo for our summer reading program (we'll be making robotic arms from cardboard based on this model) and some SMARS robots as a future Arduino program.
One of my new duties as Experiential Learning Librarian in Program Services is to oversee the 3D printing programs at the branches. We currently have 6 Lulzbot Mini version 1 available for public use at several branches. In December 2018, I held a staff training for the branches receiving 3D printers.
So, how do we make our 3D printers available for the public? There are a few levels of programming we provide. Our 3D printing programming grew naturally from public need:
Public Demos
Passive programming
The printer is out in public areas, actively printing.
A staff member may or may not be around to answer questions about the printer, but it definitely gets the patron's attention.
Leads to great conversations about what community members are interested in (both 3D printing and other random interests)
Printing Open Lab
Planned program
A staff member provides information about the 3D printing process.
Patrons may be able to select their own items to print (not really recommended...sets up the expectation that patron will be able to leave with an object)
Pre-print a bunch of simple objects (headphone holders are useful...until Bluetooth headphones make corded headphones obsolete...)
Patrons watch the printer work and get to take home a pre-printed object
More great conversations happening. You start to see patrons connecting to one another based on their interests.
Intro to 3D Design
Planned program
A staff member leads patrons through a basic 3D design project on Tinkercad. Keychains have been a successful project for us. It meets that dual goal of showing patrons how to make something practical with a 3D printer and simple enough to teach a lof the necessary design skills but still getting a printable object.
We often end up using our Printing Open Lab program to print the objects designed in Intro to Design.
Certification Staff-led workshop on safety, basic troubleshooting, and library policy around 3D printing.
Patron attends this one-hour workshop after completing Intro to Design and Open Lab (this requirement is waived if the patron has previous 3D printing experience from other sources).
After the workshop, all patrons sign the Certification Guidelines saying that they understood all the information provided in the workshop.
The patrons are added to the Certified Users list and can drop-in to use the printer on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Our road to certification:
Patrons who decide 3D printing is for them always want to print more things. Unfortunately, our library district isn't equipped to print on demand for all patron requests. I also wasn't a fan of the disconnect that happened in the learning process for the patron. They would request a print and a staff member would have to do all the troubleshooting to get it to print. The patron picks up their printed object without really getting a better understanding of the technology. I looked at what it really took to run an average print and came to the conclusion that the basic knowledge is easy to transfer to new users. There is a huge 3D printing community online and patrons, given the right direction and some guidelines, are able to take control of their own learning and mastery of the subject.
All of these steps are easy to accomplish at our biggest branch. We have over a dozen staff members knowledgeable about the 3D printer leading and assisting with programming. This was not true at our smaller branches. We tried to think of how to increase our certification offerings, but the feedback we have been receiving (and true of all programming) is that the timing was never convenient for one reason or another.
I thought some more on how to make the certification training more accessible and floated the idea by the branches of providing an on-demand certification training that patrons access through our website. The patron watches the certification video, which still covers everything in the certification guidelines, then makes an appointment at the branch of their choosing where a designated staff member reviews the information and signs off that the patron has the skills necessary to run the printer safely. After they're signed off, the printer can drop into any of the branches with 3D printers to use the printer on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Originally, I was just going to do a screen capture of my Google Slides Certification presentation and provide the voiceover. This set-up didn't quite provide enough information as the in-person training. In person, I actively have the printer running while I'm talking and refer to things it does while we work through the information. It's difficult to translate that experience to video. I also realized that if I attempted to do a one-and-done video, I would have to re-record everything if one piece of information changed.
I ran into a few bumps trying to round up the appropriate equipment to create the content. Our Library district has several new iPads with the limited version of iMovie, but no access to a Mac to access full editing. I couldn't find a free video editor for Windows that would open movies shot on the iPad. I couldn't find a free video converter to translate videos from the iPad into a usable format on Windows. I had to go to a branch to record footage of the printer printing and had to use my laptop to screen capture in Cura while I was printing. Figuring out how to make this all work was the worst kind of puzzle. In the end, I used an iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro to create the video, edit the footage and post to Youtube.
Draft one was only supposed to take a week or so. It realistically took about a month with the technical issues and re-editing the information from an in-person presentation to a recorded presentation. I sent out my draft to our 3D printing branches to get their feedback. I received a lot of great info from the group and did a pretty big overhaul of the outline, the information covered, and how the information was covered. My biggest rewrite involved a lot more information on Cura, the slicing software.
Our Library district also recently added Niche Academy to our arsenal. I originally tried to upload my videos directly to Niche Academy, but there were a lot of auto-play issues and our patrons requested closed captioning. I decided to stay with YouTube and link the videos into Niche Academy to take advantage of YouTube's Smart CC tool. It wasn't perfect, but I figured out how to download the auto-generated transcript (with timing) and make the few corrections needed.
The training is now posted through Niche Academy and also available as a playlist on Youtube. I plan to follow up with the 3D printing branches after summer reading to gauge how things are going and see what changes we need to make to our process.
One of our Lulzbot Minis died. 💀 It started failing during calibration and I noticed the z-level was a bit off, but then it was suddenly WAY off!
And this thing cracked.
It had an issue a few months ago where a hole developed around the extruder, leading to filament oozing out.
We sent the extruder back to Lulzbot and they sent us a new one (I think we just barely slid in while it was still under warranty). It was a model we had it in-branch less than a year, too.😞 This time, IT decided it would be too expensive to send back to Lulzbot for evaluation and repairs. So, RIP, RGP.
My first choice would have been to buy an exact replacement and send it back out to the downtown branch to replace the broken printer. But... Lulzbot has retired the version 1 and now offers a new (and slightly more expensive) version 2.
Yep, it's still called the Mini. Yep, it still looks the same. Yep, it is just enough different to be troublesome for our newly implemented Certification procedures.
The death of our Mini 1 also sparked a conversation on how we should move forward with our 3D printing programming. Who should troubleshoot? Who should manage supplies? Who should bear the financial responsibility?
For now, we decided to send OG3D, the district's traveling Lulzbot Mini 1, to take the place of the dead Mini at our downtown branch. In its place, we're trying out the Mini 2 as our roving district printer. I figure this will give me some time to get to know the new model, write updated documentation, and spend some quality time thinking through the long-range plan of our 3D printers.
I have been working with the Mini 2 for just over a month. It's headed to a branch for the next few weeks. We'll see how it goes. I quickly threw together an unboxing and quick start training video for staff to refer to when they get stuck:
The main differences between Version 1 and Version 2 (that I've noticed): 1). a slightly larger printable area (you can actually print 6" pieces on this model. Our Version Ones only makes it to about 5:75," 2). an LCD screen with SD card slot, 3). an E3D Titan Aero, .50mm nozzle tool head, and 4). it is ssssooooo quiet!
The E3D Titan Aero tool head includes a different idler than the Mini1 hexagonal heads. It's a bit finicky to push forward and get the filament loaded correctly. In the first month of using it, I got filament jammed into the printer more than once. The quickstart instructions from Lulzbot indicate to preheat the hot end, then hit the retract button (which was new to me). In the Mini1, you can heat the filament up to temp, loosen the idler and just kind of pull the filament out. I tried the retraction method on the Mini2, but the filament was stuck.
I panicked...but only a little bit...
I looked up more resources and found a suggestion to preheat the hot end, extrude a little bit (as the filament in the hot end tends to pool around the edge of the extruder once cooled and then retract the filament up and out. That worked pretty well. I ended up making a Filament Load video for staff as well:
Then I got filament stuck again! ^ didn't work this time. I ended up calling Lulzbot Support. They suggested all the above steps and then told me to stop the fan on the left-hand side of the tool head so that the hot end heat will travel further up into the tool head and heat up more of the filament. I did this and it worked!
I used to just snip the filament and leave a bit in the tool head when packing it up to send to a branch. I don't think I'll let filament sit in it anymore.
