Illinois MakerLab's Story with Nameplates

Illinois MakerLab staff previously designed a 3D model of the nameplate on FUSION 360. We used to manually edit the name on the nameplate model when we receive an order. This requires a lot of effort and time to manually edit the names, especially when the order became large.

On December 16, 2019, we received a huge order for nameplates for iMBA mentors. The nameplates are printed for online MBA students with a mix of blue and orange. The order consists of 6 nameplates that are due on December 18, 2019, and 100 more by January 30, 2020. The high number of nameplates shocked us. We did not want to miss this order, but at the same time, we knew that if we continue to manually edit the names on the nameplate model, there is a high possibility that we would make mistakes. The consumption of staff’s time is also a considerable concern at the time until we found that we could write a script with the FUSION 360 API to edit the nameplates through feeding all the names into a script. We even created a front end for any staff member to enter a name and get a ready-to-print nameplate file.

During the COVID-19 Stay-at-Home period, we printed 10 nameplates for corporate clients as souvenirs for free. Our lab staff printed these in grey color at home and delivered them to the lab after all were finished with high quality.

To Be Continued…

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