Day 24 - Crazy days

Upon arrival for my last day of the residency I learnt that tragic circumstances had transpired the previous day. At some point the UP! printer had ceased printing for Corrie and despite her valiant efforts to ressurrect the UP! it remained unable to print for the remainder of her last day which I can only imagine must have been incredibly frustrating for her as neither of us had up to that point felt that we had reached our final objectives or had enough time with the printers.

I optimistically turned on the UP! printer and headed for its maintenance screen to see if I could detect any anomalies but all seemed well. I tried to extrude some material and the filament manifested as requested; things were looking up (pun intended). Upon attemtping to print a small test object it became readily apparent that the printer was indeed having some serious issues. The printer seemed to be working fine initially, the raft material was created correctly and the beginnings of the support structure and object looked promising, then the printer decided to stop extruding. Several attempts at printing were only made more frustrating by the printer seemingly being able to extrude normally from its control panel.

As an extra twist of fate the universe had decided to provide me with what was easily the busiest day of the entire residency which made troubleshooting difficult. In the end I was not able to successfully print anything on the UP! and only managed three small prints on the Makerbot in between discussions with interested members of the public. Ultimately it proved to be a bittersweet ending to the residency; the planned prints for the last day didn't happen but I was able to show a lot of people (including a couple of close friends and my very own mother) the Makerbot in action and the working space as well as the collection of objects that Corrie and myself had produced during the previous month.