SPEC Kit 348: Rapid Fabrication/Makerspace Services · 29
Decision to move forward from pilot project to production service based on scalability, capacity (staffing and
equipment), demand, reliability, and opportunities for integration with campus research initiatives.
Demand and whether it supplements a campus class or academic program.
During our pilot phase, we gauged interest from anyone we could talk to, and it became clear that the applications for
this technology are so broad that any department could use it. Existing printers on campus are typically limited to a
single department or faculty member and cannot effectively be used for course assignments or experimentation by our
large campus community. Moving to production would allow us to fill that void.
In testing now, will be piloting in a digital scholarship sense this coming year and will see how demand and
work proceeds.
It depends on the service. We usually like to work with the students to ensure that the service we are piloting is
something they want. We get the students to test and once they have tested it and we get the feedback from them. If
the feedback is good we move it to production.
Our existing space isn’t a makerspace, yet it has many forms of equipment one would expect in a makerspace. The
switch to production was a gradual one as we constantly re-evaluate our service and look for new technologies and
directions. Our method of evaluation relies heavily on those in the community using the service. Once we determined
the technology was stable enough to deliver reasonable expectations consistently, we made it available to the
community. Once released (i.e., in production) we continuously refined our understanding of the technology, refined our
pricing model, and looked for new capabilities with the existing equipment or through adding to existing resources. We
still do this even 10 years later.
Our first Makerbot printer and scanner were purchased with library technology funds and the second 3-D printer was
acquired through an Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning​ grant received by a professor in the School of Business.
Students in the Collaborative Design for Innovation course were tasked with developing prototypes for a non-profit
organization that is in the process of developing a new snack food. The class was divided into teams of 4–5 students
and each team had 5 weeks to create and iterate their design submission. The students worked with New Media Center
staff to perfect their design ideas. The students brought in rough sketches or models that they had created in clay, then
staff helped them develop their preliminary ideas into 3-D digital files and ultimately into 3-D objects printed on the
Makerbot. Because our work with this class went extremely well, we felt that we could offer 3-D scanning and printing
services to the broader community.
Still determining.
Sustainable financially and with space and staffing resources continued user need equipment functions in a way that
can sustain the service level of staff intervention and equipment maintenance required is reasonable and sustainable.
The quality of the final product needs to meet basic acceptable standards and a preliminary set of policies and
procedures must be established.
The service model being used for the makerspace services has existed for the Media Commons video production service
since 2007. The same model is being applied to makerspace services in this instance. In that sense, it has been piloted
for 8 years. In other ways, our implementation actually is the pilot. Should the makerspace/3-D printers in Pattee be very
successful, there may be effort to open more around campus or at other campuses.
We are looking at the overarching campus plans for design learning, fabrication facilities, and visualization and data
analytics, 3-D printing, and 3-D scanning.
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