The New York University Tisch School of the Arts Makerspace houses three 3D printers serving hundreds of undergraduate and master’s level students – but until recently had a major problem with chaotic usage tracking and maintenance. Waste, inefficiency, and inequity reigned in a lab that should be opening up creative energy.
Used by students from the Interactive Telecommunications Program – which use communications technologies to augment, improve, and bring delight, utility and meaning into people’s lives, the lab had only three printers and no centralised system for tracking usage or maintenance. The makerspace struggled with waste, inequity, and inefficiency.
“It was chaos,” says Phil Caridi, shop manager and faculty advisor. “Students monopolised machines. Material use was unchecked. We had no way to monitor or manage it all.”
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