In his first foray into making, Rogers was able to provide only 3-D printing and a laser cutter. While Rogers is the first to acknowledge that doesn’t make it a real makerspace, he was eager to align the library with the movement and continue to grow what they can offer.
“We think of a 3-D printer, a laser printer, as actually being an information tool or resource because it’s all about the data that goes into the tool,” Rogers said. “You can’t do anything without understanding the data that goes into the machine.”
He sometimes compares the process of designing and 3-D printing a project to research. Students have to think about what they are making, understand its scale, design it on software and only then can it be printed.
The new library also opened up more space at NCSU’s older library, D.H. Hill. When the smaller, 3-D printing-focused making experiment went…
