Illinois MakerLab · Website redesign · October 2026
Five directions for the new MakerLab site
Every direction carries the same content: the new seven-printer Bambu Lab fleet, the gift from Haoyang Xu and Yuxin Ning, and the services, prices, programs and hours from the current site.
Each one is a working page, not a picture. Open it, scroll it, click things.
- H2C × 2 · gift
- X2D × 2 · gift
- H2S × 2
- X1C × 1 · gift
- BIF Room 3030
- Fall 2026 hours, live open/closed
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Open ↗01
Slicer
The site as a slicer workspace, the software every print starts in.
- Signature
- “Learn. Make. Share.” prints itself on a build plate. Drag the layer slider to see the infill, and switch printers to compare plate sizes.
- Type
- Chivo and Chivo Mono
- Color
- Best for
- A practical, tool-first site. The cost estimator and spec table make ordering easy.
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Open ↗02
Blueprint
The site as an engineering drawing set on Illinois Blue.
- Signature
- An isometric H2S drawn line by line, a bill of materials, revision clouds, and the gift recorded as General Note 1.
- Type
- Barlow Condensed, Barlow and IBM Plex Mono
- Color
- Best for
- Speaking to engineers and showing how precise the new fleet is.
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Open ↗03
Gallery
The new fleet presented as a museum exhibition.
- Signature
- An installation view of all four models at relative size, museum wall labels, and a credit line on each donated printer: Gift of Haoyang Xu and Yuxin Ning, 2026.
- Type
- Libre Franklin and Libre Caslon
- Color
- Best for
- The most refined way to recognize the gift.
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Open ↗04
Night Shift
A live board of all seven printers, the queue and today’s hours.
- Signature
- Status, progress and temperatures update every second. Hover the gift panel and the donated printers light up on the board.
- Type
- Hanken Grotesk and Martian Mono
- Color
- Best for
- Students checking whether a printer is free before they walk over. The demo uses simulated data.
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Open ↗05
Poster
A series of Swiss-style posters in Illinois orange and blue.
- Signature
- A giant 7 printed layer by layer, one poster per model, and the room number 3030 set as large as the page allows.
- Type
- Big Shoulders, drawn for the City of Chicago, and Archivo
- Color
- Best for
- A bold launch, plus flyers and social posts that match the site.
To confirm before launch
- H2S credit. The two H2S printers carry no donor credit. They are labeled as MakerLab printers.
- File types. Ordering now lists STL, OBJ and 3MF, since 3MF is Bambu Studio’s native format. The current site lists STL and OBJ.
- Prices, hours and programs come from the current site: Fall 2026 hours, per-gram rates, workshops, camps and BADM 331.
- Printer specs follow Bambu Lab’s published figures. The H2C build volume is the two-nozzle total, 330 × 320 × 325 mm.
- Illustrations. Printers are drawn, not photographed. Real photos of the lab would replace them.
- Night Shift data is simulated. A live version would read each printer’s status over the lab network.