Pilot Concluded – Stay Tuned!

We ran this pilot as an experiment to determine if and how we can offer 3d printing to the OSU community reliably, affordably, efficiently, and sustainably. How much does it cost to keep the printers supplied? How often do the printers malfunction? How closely can we predict when a job will be finished? What is the demand, and how many printers are needed to keep up? What should staff be trained to do? What should users be expected to know or do? How is providing this resource contributing to our academic mission?

At this point, the Digital Union’s 3D Printing pilot has officially concluded, and we are excited to see the overwhelming amount of interest and demand. Over the course of 3 months, nearly 800 submissions from over 300 users, wow! A lot of you have asked if 3D printing will be back, and whether it will still be free, and well…that’s part of what we will be spending the next few weeks figuring out.

Note to our users: 3D printing has been suspended while we take a hiatus to assess our results. If you’ve received a message that your print job is ready for pickup, please stop by to retrieve your items. Thanks for participating in our pilot, and we look forward to sharing our results with you here in a few weeks!

2 thoughts on “Pilot Concluded – Stay Tuned!

    • Good news – we’ve decided to keep 3D printing as a long term service at the Digital Union! We learned a lot from the pilot in terms of what needs to be done to streamline the process. Those changes are being put in place now, and we’ll be making the service officially available in the next couple months, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, you can print at Tech Hub for a reasonable fee. https://u.osu.edu/techhublabs/category/3d-printing/

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