Personal/Non-Academic 3D Printing at Education Commons: Print 3D

The 3D printers at the Education Commons are available to the Penn community of students, faculty, and staff.  The 3D printing services at the Education Commons is free for both academic and non-academic projects, but all print requests are subject to the following policies:

I.  Penn Libraries reserves the right to refuse any 3D print request. No one will be permitted to use our 3D printer to create material that is:

• Prohibited by local, state, or federal law, or by University of Pennsylvania policy.
• Unsafe, harmful, dangerous, or poses an immediate threat to the well-being of others. 
• Obscene or otherwise inappropriate for the Library environment.
• In violation of another’s intellectual property rights. For example, the printer will not be used to reproduce material subject to copyright, patent or trademark protection.
• Inefficient designs that are not suitable for 3D printing 

II.  The Education Commons prints non-academic projects for personal use by members of the Penn Community.  You may not use the service to print items you intend to sell.  If you are using the service to design a product, all members of your team must be Penn students, faculty, or staff with active PennKeys.  Under no circumstances may you use the Education Commons to print items for professional projects involving individuals or companies outside of the University of Pennsylvania.  Users who violate this policy will no longer be eligible for 3D printing services.

III. Each individual has a maximum of 50 hours of which can be used for personal prints, per semester. 

IV. Only designated library staff will have hands-on access to the 3D printer. This is not a self-service facility. However, if you are interested in the process of seeing your print set up or printing, please do let us know and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

V. Any designs submitted for printing will not be saved nor used again for prints. We will have data regarding who requested prints but no other data will be saved. 

VI. PLA plastic, which is the standard filament we use, is not considered food safe by the FDA and we do not recommend printing objects that come in contact with food unless you are aware of its material properties and its disinfection techniques. 

What can I print? 

Update December 2nd: Last day to submit prints that are guaranteed to be available for pick up before the semester ends is December 12nd. After that, any submitted requests may not be finished printing before the EC closes for the semester.

Design (READ THIS BEFORE SUBMITTING)

File Format 

To print a model on the our 3D printers, it must be exported as a binary Stereolithography file, with an STL extension (.stl) in METRIC millimeter units.  Most CAD programs can save or export in this format, as can other free 3D modeling software packages, such as Fusion 360, Solidworks, Rhino, TinkerCAD, Onshape, and Blender. We will not use other files or gcodes as our printers have custom firmware and hardware upgrades.

Each .stl file submitted must have only one design and no other objects that are not connected; there must be only one component/body per file. If you need duplicates, please mention them separately when requesting them. 

Some designs may not be printed as we use consumer-grade FDM/FFF style 3D printers, which cannot accommodate more minor details or will print too many supports to make it viable to print reliably. We will not print any request that takes more than 24 hours unless a suitable reason is given, as the risk of failure during print increases exponentially. We will not design objects for patrons but can offer advice and help in designing models. We can but will not print a box, organizers, nor any other prints that serve are a simple shape with a large volume as it is an inefficient way to use additive manufacturing.

Failure to follow directions will result in canceled requests or temporary suspension from requests.

Dimensions

The 3D model must be less than the build volume of one of our printers:

Prusa MK4 & MK3S+: The build volume is 200 x 200 x 240 mm 

Bambu P1S: The build volume is 250 x 250 x 250 mm (0.6mm nozzle installed, only 0.3 layer height allowed)

Manifold or Watertight

The mesh or surface of the 3D model must be watertight and solid. More technically, all faces of the object must construct one or more closed-volume entities. When the faces are not fully closed, they produce gaps or holes in the model, and those holes and gaps will keep the model from printing correctly. Any faulty designs will not be printed and must be fixed by the submitter.

Color and Filament types

In most cases, the color of prints cannot be requested, and they will be printed according to the filaments we have in stock. However, if there is a specific reason (ex., functional use case, bio-related, or project critical specification), we can try accommodating requests. 

We currently have PLA plastic as our standard for printing, but we also carry ASA, TPU, PETG, and other specialty filaments (ex., silk, color change, glow-in-the-dark, transparent, etc.) that can be used in certain cases, please reach out to us if you need additional consultation.

Design limitations and Supports

We offer consumer-grade FDM/FFF style 3D printers that are limited by the machine's physical design to print objects that are smaller than 1mm and also have weaker mechanical properties in their vertical orientation for layer adhesion. Due to this fact, we will deny some print requests as they cannot be reliably printed or will be too fragile to use.

If your design generates more support structures than the actual design, we might decline to print your object to reduce waste by-products. Please try to design your object to produce less support (we will try to orient the object during slicing to have optimal strength and less support generation)

Slicer Settings

By default our slicer settings are set to 0.2 mm layer height, 15% cubic infill, 2 vertical perimeter shells, with aligned seam positions. If your print requires more specific settings or if you require documentation, please let us know.

How much does it cost?

Nothing!

3D printing is free for current Penn students, faculty, and staff with PennKey and active PennCard at a limit of 50 hours of print time per semester. However, if you do not pick up your print within 2 weeks or do not communicate a reason for the pick-up delay, it will be reflected in your account, and we will limit your future requests.

Submit your Model

When you are ready to submit your print request, please complete the request form and submit your stl file under Personal/Non-Academic.

After we have reviewed your file to ensure it will print correctly, we will process it, put it in the queue, print it, and email you that it is available for pick up. We will do our best to print your object as soon as possible, but many people are interested in the printers and there may be delays so we appreciate your patience.

Please read the following directions or you request can be denied/ignored.

1. Fill out the request form and submit your file.  Submit files in STL format only. We do not accept any other file types, including .obj or .gcode files as our printers have been modified.
2. A staff member will review your request and add it to the queue.  We will email you with any questions we may have to clarify your request. Wait times depend on how many current requests we have but can range from 1 day to 1 week. Do not ask for queue times as they differ day by day and are inherently different depending on what design is submitted. 
3. You will receive an email when your print is finished. Stop by the Education Commons during our open hours to pick it up at the desk! If you do not pick up your print nor communicate within 2 weeks our pick up confirmation email, we will flag you and future services will be limited.

Prusa MK4

Prusa MK3S+

Bambu P1P