Hi all,
First off, I want to thank the LCC for tirelessly working to keep the laser cutter up and running for member usage. It’s all volunteer time and they put a lot of effort into it.
What I’d like to highlight is that the laser seems to demand a great deal of skilled volunteer support. Here’s what I’ve compiled from the available slack history:
September 23rd - Laser bumped out of alignment - Out of Order
Fixed September 27th by TristanL by reseating print head. Now operational.September 30th - Laser cutter Out of Order / misaligned
lukecyca, majicj, tristanL
the water in the cooler which was grungy and only about half full.
- Fixed the leak in the cooler where the copper piping enters the cooler.
- Cleaned all the laser mirrors
- Aligned the laser mirrors
October 9th - Laser Cutter PC Out of Order
October 9th - lukecyca rebuilds raid driveOctober 13th - laser down (lukecyca)
- laser up - cause unknown
October 16th - laser maintenance (lukecyca)
- power level capped at 65 percent
- new optics required
October 20th - laser down
- diagnosis and fix pending
So, looking at just this period from September 23 to October 20th shows 6 times where the laser cutter required high skilled volunteers to diagnosis and fix the issue. My main points here are:
- The laser is a tool enjoyed by the space as a whole
- It’s delicate and requires a lot of work to keep it going
- It places an unfair burden on limited volunteer resources with an even more limited knowledge resource pool
So here are a few proposals to bikeshed:
- Better monitoring of the laser cutter usage
- I don’t know what this would entail. It could be anything from vibration sensors to video cameras
- Root cause analysis
- what is the root cause of the mechanical failures?
- how do we prevent them from happening so frequently?
- Better user training based on root cause analysis
- help users understand how they prevent laser cutter failures
- Proportional funding based on usage
- right now the laser cutter maintenance budget comes out of general membership revenue
- if root cause analysis shows that general wear and tear is causing the failures, then that should be accounted for in usage fees
- the model for this could take a number of forms:
- all members getting a free number of minutes
- overage fees for long usage/production runs
tl;dr:
- Laser cutter needs a lot of work
- a tiny group of people is throwing a lot of volunteer hours at it
- this should change to avoid volunteer burnout
Thanks for reading, and feel free to bikeshed away in the thread.