By Cody Parker
The 3d Printer Lab Setup On Sunday the 5th of April I was contacted by the principal of my school Mr. Mahurin to help my local makerspace. At Wide Awake Geek I set up the 3d printers to make shields for local first responders and health care providers. The printers were delivered on Monday by Mr. Mahurin for me to set up and I started on Tuesday.
It went by slowly that day because of firmware updates for the two Dremel 3D40’s, so nothing got printed that day. On Wednesday though it started picking up. I got both the Dremels running and they were printing well enough. Also on Wednesday I started getting the final layout of the room done by putting all the printers on one wall and setting up the desks for the assembly line manufacturing of the shields and mask supports.
On Thursday I set up the Printerbots, but they wouldn’t print without an internet connection. So with the help of Mr. Ferguson, the owner of Wide Awake Geek, we set up the internet infrastructure so that we could fully utilize the machines. On Friday I brought in my personal Dremel 3D20 to help with the cause, bringing the total number of printers to 6 including the Afinia h800. This whole effort is being put on by Yuba Sutter Operation Shields UP! which is a local organization making shields for law enforcement, hospitals, and front line care providers.
They are helping by making thousands of these shields and are churning out hundreds daily. To help with this cause I have been working from 9am to 9pm Monday through Friday, to make sure that our care providers and law enforcement get what they need to safely do their job.
Although none of this could’ve happened without your support. In our industry this is the first event of its kind and everyone is hopping on board to help. If you have a 3d printer, you too can help. At our locations we have donation boxes that people can drop prints into. We then sanitize and package them to go towards the cause and help a professional in need.