From Copy/Paste to Copying Pastes: Supporting Replication in an Online Digital Fabrication Community

Exploratory fabrication techniques present new challenges for the reproducibility of small scale automation workflows. In this short paper, we investigate how to repeat, reproduce, and remix exploratory 3D printing workflows. Motivated by challenges in existing online communities, we introduce a platform for sharing computationally fabricated objects. We then propose strategies to support replicability that adapt common end-user programming tools to fabrication. These include ‘diff’ tools for comparing code and its corresponding physical output across iterations, linting tools to communicate process details found through material testing, and remix graphs to facilitate the discovery of relevant models. Through the production and reproduction of several example artifacts across various machines and materials, we demonstrate how our platform supports replication of exploratory workflows. Based on our work, we discuss how to close the loop between exploratory digital fabrication tools and community.