Help and Advice running Reprap in University lab

Dear All

I work as an IT technician at an art school and have been pushing for the use of Reprap and
FFF machines in the school

Eventually the college have given some small recognition and resources for it and I having a
meeting tomorrow to discuss the wider plans.

It would be extremely helpful if there are other Technicians /RP people working in labs who could
give me any general ideas of the type of layouts they work with:

kind of machines used (FFF SLP etc)
mix with other technologies and workshop layout ie workshop machines, scanners ,cnc etc
support levels and level of user access
are there Reprap user groups on site

This info would really help me and other techs to start to build plans
to make 3D printing more accessible and get people building more Repraps

Many Thanks

Simon

Contact Dr. Pearce at Michigan Tech.

We are particulary interested in students that either
1) have experience in research on solar PV or
2) have experience in open source hardware/RepRap technology.

[www.mse.mtu.edu]

[www.mtu.edu]

Hello Simon,
I am in a very similar situation: as a tutor in a workshop of an art school, I helped students to build ten Mendel90's last year. These machines were supposed to be distributed across art school for the classes to use, but seemingly most of them fell into disuse. A lot of the students didn't seem to care about them after the initial rush and excitement.
Tomorrow, just like you (strange coincidence, lol), we will have a meeting for general maintenance and to redistribute the printers.
Our school has got about 15-17 RepRaps, some of them privately owned. One workshop instructor who owns an Objet printer also offers a printing service for students, but his machine isn't on location.
Mostly, it is the design students (our art school has got Bauhaus influences) who use the printers for prototypes and smaller projects, but we had one graduate developing the technology further to print tubular structures. "My" workshop seems to be most active in using the printers for all kinds of stuff. As we often realize more technical projects, it is often pulleys, adapters and mechanical parts including Raspberry Pi cases and RepRap parts that we print, but we tried a lot of different stuff from thingiverse and experimental file conversions.
Coming from an FOSS background, it is pretty much a given that all our toolchain is based on free and open source software and hardware
Recently, I started a collaboration with another workshop instructor to try out lost PLA casting.
So, this is about the scope of things we do with 3D printing...hope this helps in any way.

Thank you for all your replies:
A2 I have emailed Dr Pearce but no reply yet

uGen thanks for your clear and detailed reply, that
really helped me argue the case for Reprap and FFF
to be rolled in to departments at a wider level

If anyone else has experience in this area of university
RP it would really help right now

All the best
Simon