I Don’t Have The Power To Respond Right Now

I have a side job in a social kind of institute aimed at senior citizens and teenagers.

As such, the institute has bought a 3D printer to use in projects aimed at the teenagers — projects I will be teaching, since I’m the person with experience in 3D printing and the likes.

For showing off and getting the teens interested, I’m working on a project that ties computer programming and 3D printing together, and I have to print a rather large object on the 3D printer for this project. “Rather large” refers to printing times of two to two and a half days. It’s one of the first prints I’m doing there, certainly the first one of such size.

So, after starting the print, I go to the people working full time in the institute and try to give them instructions regarding the print. I tell them things like, “Do me a favor and from time to time have a look at the print. It may go wrong and look like pasta or solid rocks. Stop the printer if that happens,” and, “Please don’t open the windows or leave the door in the room open for a longer time. If the print cools down, it tears off the print bed and is ruined,” and, “Don’t turn the power off to the printer in the evening. The print will take about 70 hours. Do not be worried about this.”

I return on the second day and check on my print. The thing’s about halfway done, so I figure the day after, it will be ready, and I plan to return in the evening of the next day. I chat a bit with my colleagues, again mentioning the above “printing rules.”

Sadly, things do not go as expected, so instead of being there the evening of the third day, I show up in the morning of the fourth. I meet the colleague I chatted with before, who is at the moment the only one in charge there for the whole week.

We greet, and they inform me I may not get into the room with the printer as they have a big educational event where they need about all rooms, so the printer room may not be available.

Also, because of this, they started setting up the rooms for the event the day before. So, the coworker went into the print room, noticed the rather warm room temperature caused by the printer, deduced the people setting up the rooms would most certainly try to open the windows and air the room… and stopped the printer by turning off the power.

This, in turn, caused it to cool down and tear off.

It was the one thing I did not explicitly mention.