Vet Med Library Information

If you have something you want printed,
there are a few things to know:

• The service is free! ​

  • Requests for prints for educational/academic/research purposes, class projects, and/or for the teaching hospital or the clinical skills lab have no limits to printing

    • if the object is very large, we may need to split it into sections to complete the print

  • Requests for prints for personal projects and/or entertainment purposes may incur a limit of 250g/month restrictions. We will let you know if you are approaching this limit.  

  • The primary purpose of the 3D printing service through the Vet Med Library is to support the VMCVM community. We may print requests from the greater Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth communities at our discretion. However, additional limits to print requests (e.g. 150g/month) from these communities may be applied, as these communities are primarily supported by the 3D Design Studio located in Newman Library. 

• ​We generally only accept files with .stl and .obj file extensions; we can also work with .amf extensions on a limited basis

• Our default is to print in PLA (hard plastic, food grade), but we do have a few other material options for special projects or specific needs. 

  • Please contact us directly at VetMedLib-g@vt.edu about this option

• We can only print one type of filament at a time, so we will do "batch" loads, meaning that we will print based on filament type and color, not necessarily in the order in which requests are received.

• PLA is easily painted, but we will accept color requests and do our best to accommodate. Note, this type of request will generally cause a delay in the print time to completion.