Disclaimer: This site is designed to share ideas related to 3D Printing in the classroom - and general school tasks and challenges. We have used essentially two brands of machines for its duration with a change made only in the last few years due to our victory in a national competition which allowed us to switch.
However there have been some unexpected bonuses that have developed with the printers (Snapmakers) at present which in an educational setting need addressing. The first is that having switched the brand of machines we are spending very minimum of time unblocking the machines - unfortunately due to the age of our previous machines (even the reconditioned ones) we were sometimes finding them challenging (as school teachers, not engineers).
An example from a print today - a student designed the base of a box - the print was a very long print, nearly thirty hours. The printer ran out of PLA filament at the eighteen hour mark. In normal circumstances one might expect that the printer might fail and the entire process might have to be started again - however this was not the case. The printer was able to recognise the PLA had run out and it came up with a message explaining this. It was awaiting additional PLA to finish the print. When this was loaded into the machine the machine was able to return to the print at exactly the place that it had stopped and therefore continue the print perfectly. The printer has also repeated this during a power cut (that it recognised the power cut and therefore knew that it had occurred and was able to restart at the exact point).
In the past both of these instances would cause the print and the project to restart.
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