Contribution

Here’s my contribution: an issue in a 3D Printer script

Here’s some reflection:

I contributed a feature request / issue to the Lulzbot Mini print profile Phabricator instance. I suggested that they change the routine for a finished print so that the machine would clean itself as it cooled. I’ve been printing with Lulzbot Mini printers for over a year now, and I really think this feature would help them be more reliable. Two things really strike me about my open source contribution: how easy it was and how little scaffolding there is to contribute to this project. I didn’t have any difficulty finding the repository for the print profiles for the Lulzbot Mini. The company is fully open source, both hardware and software, so it was just a matter of following a few links. I did have to sign up for a phabricator account, but I was able to use my github credentials instead of setting up a whole new username and password. So that was very easy. What I found strange, however, is that they don’t seem to have any sort of documentation or procedure for who can contribute or what an issue should look like. If they do, it might be buried in their forum, but I didn’t see it. Even now I am not sure if they will consider my issue or if they will dismiss it entirely as unfeasible without updating the issue card.

Unless they get to it first, I’ll probably modify the gcode myself once the semester is over and try out these changes. Right now we, at the Kenan Science Library Makerspace, have too many jobs in the queue to risk slowing down production. I do hope that someone sees my issue and gives it a shot, but if they don’t, I’ll try it and let them know the results.