Trying to fit a 3D Printer into office dynamics

You might be forgiven to be thinking this is about the way 3D printers seems to have this mesmorising effect which can stop any astute worker in their tracks to watch the little motors and pulleys work away. However, there is a much more technical difficulty which needs to be resolved.

There is an issue with our ToM which causes the sides of the bottom of whatever is being printed to lift up in a curved shape and whilst in most cases this can be put down to the building platform not being clean enough the reality is this is being caused by something completely different. The way 3D printers keep objects from slipping off whilst they are printing is to keep the base tacky, with plastic this is done by keeping the base hot. So if you have an outside source cooling your plastic, say an office fan or air conditioner this seems to cause the sides of the print to warp. As experienced first hand by turning off all the office cooling devices after all my co-workers had left for the day.

So what is left is to work out how the thermal dynamics of the office work so that sections of the office are inhabitable by humans and the others more inhabitable by the printer, this is a pressing matter with summer just around the corner.

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