A curious student who wants to try out 3D printing has one level of motivation.

A student who has to 3D print for a grade has a very different, and usually much higher level of motivation.

You’re going to lose a lot of potential users if you try to onboard both of these groups the same way.

Beginnings are high leverage times. Expectations you set early on tend to stick, both good and bad.

It’s easy to tell yourself that you’ll correct a student next time, whether it’s cleaning up after themselves or using better technique. This is a mistake. Take advantage of the high leverage time.

It’s never too early to start training students to behave the way you want. 

It’s also never too early to start training them to behave poorly.

You slide a tool battery into its charger, feeling a satisfying click at the end. After finishing with a wrench, you put it back in the foam cutout where it perfectly fits, feeling the slight resistance that holds the wrench in place.

Tools get back to their homes more often when it feels good to put them back.

In the last year, I started stocking only yellow PLA filament. 

There was no revolt.

Instead there was an increased interest in spray painting and casting, exactly what I’d hoped would happen.

Are you providing more options than you need somewhere in your space? Are there areas/tools sitting unused because you’ve moved the problem they solve somewhere else?

Systems beat out individuals every time. If most people in your space are doing something you don’t like, there’s something in your system that incentivizes them to do it that way.

Or the alternatives aren’t incentivized enough.

The system is your responsibility. Don’t blame individuals for the failing of your system.

In a cohort model program, all of my student employees leave once a year. 

As does all of their training and knowledge. 

Starting over each year is a Sisyphean task. We needed a way to grow each year, instead of resetting.

Find a way to compound each year.

For us, documentation, hiring processes, and training processes are ways we grow each year. That means we review them constantly and try something new if we aren’t getting the results we want. Just having a process won’t give you compounding, you have to invest time in evaluating and improving it.

You know the hex wrenches that come in a set and swing out like Swiss Army knives? They’re awful to use. Feels like you’re going to break them whenever you find a particularly stuck screw or bolt. They also don’t fit in as many small spaces.

They’re also the only hex wrenches I stock in our space.

Individual hex wrenches get lost. Metric and imperial get mixed. What’s normally a better tool, results in a worse experience in a shared space.

Of course I still have a secret set of individual wrenches locked in my desk for when I need to repair something.

The first time I find out that we’re running low on a supply is when someone tells me they can’t find any. 

Why didn’t the person who used the last piece tell me?

I know the person who used the last of something isn’t likely to tell me, so I keep a backup supply of most things locked away.

When someone tells me they can’t find something. I can give them some, and immediately order more. 

How do you manage inventory? Do you regularly inventory and order accordingly?

I didn’t recycle much when I lived in an apartment complex. The recycling bins were too far away from my apartment and I would have had to have extra space for a recycling bin in my apartment.

Then I moved somewhere where I had dedicated bins straight from the waste management monopoly.

Recycling was free, but you paid based on your garbage can size.

Now I’m an enthusiastic recycler.

My values haven’t changed, but my circumstances have, and thus my behaviors have.

I love a good sheet of sandpaper. You can use it to lap a piece flat, cut a piece off to use only as much as you need, comes in lots of different formulations and grits.

And they’re terrible in shared spaces.

They get put back in the wrong spot, put back while completely used up, cut with scissors (dulling the scissors), and curled up.

In a shared space, shop rolls are the move. Easily rippable. No one puts back a used segment. Even if they don’t wear the segment out, there’s no big loss.

Sometimes what works in a professional or home shop, doesn’t work in a shared space.