Changing printer ownership

9.2.1 Changing printer ownership

Occasionally it may be necessary or useful to switch printerownership, or to attach a printer originally connected by some otherPolar Cloud member to your Polar Cloud account: for instance, ifyou are taking over or acquiring a previously used printer fromanother teacher.

There are four levels of “ownership/management change” of aprinter:

1.

You wish to allow another Polar Cloud member to assist you in managing the printer (for instance, allow a teaching assistant to help manage the printer): add the Polar Cloud member as a printer manager, as discussed in Section 9.2.3.

2.

You wish to transfer Polar Cloud ownership of the printer to another person in your organization, while still allowing any other users of the printer to continue to use it without interruption, and while still retaining the printer history; (for instance, a different teacher is taking charge of a maker lab, while the same students will be continuing to use the same printer).

The printer “MEMBERS” screen’s “CHANGE OWNER” button is intended for this sort of case, where only the Polar Cloud ultimate authority for the printer is changing – where the list of printer “MEMBERS” is not otherwise changing, and where retaining the printer’s “HISTORY” of what it has performed may be desirable.

For non-Polar3D printers, also be sure to change the printer’s own settings for registration to a Polar Cloud account (“Email” and “PIN Code”) to the proper values for the new Polar Cloud owner of the printer.

3.

The printer is being transferred to a different organization (or at least re-purposed within your organization): any former users of the printer will no longer (automatically) be able to print on it, but you would like to retain the Polar Cloud printer “HISTORY” and “USAGE” data, and perhaps have a transition period during which former users of the printer might move any still pending print jobs queued to the printer to a different printer. (This might be the case where you are transferring one of your printers, but you and other printer “MEMBERS” are still performing 3D printing on other printers.)

On the printer itself, obsolete/invalidate the printer’s registration in the Polar Cloud: e.g., use the Polar3D printer local web interface “Reset Printer on the Polar Cloud” button, or the DREMEL 3D45 printer’s “FACTORY RESET” button. The former printer will now remain in the Polar Cloud under the name serial-number-DELETED-date , with a status of “OFFLINE”; (for an example of how such an obsoleted printer then appears in the Polar Cloud, see Figure 10.64).

4.

You are completely finished with the printer: you do not need or wish to retain in the Polar Cloud the printer “HISTORY” or “USAGE” data, and it is okay to simply discard any pending print jobs in the printer’s queue.

Use the printer “SETTINGS” screen’s “DELETE PRINTER” button. (This might be the case for a test printer, or at the end of a project or a school year, if no Polar Cloud records regarding the printer need be retained.)

A new owner of a non-Polar3D printer, if he or she wishes to connect the printer to the Polar Cloud, will presumably enter his or her own Polar Cloud account details (“Email” and “PIN Code”) into the printer’s configuration – but before you hand over the printer, if you don’t want to have the chance that a new owner omits configuring their own values on the printer and instead accidentally re-registers the printer back to your Polar Cloud account, you may prefer to either change your own account “PIN Code”, or delete (or alter) your account values from the printer configuration, either via a printer reset such as the DREMEL 3D45 printer’s “FACTORY RESET” button, or simply by altering on the printer the values you had previously entered for your own Polar Cloud account.

Note that in any of the cases 2, 3, or 4, the printer’s localnetwork configuration may need to be changed, as well as its PolarCloud owner registration. And while it may be up to any new ownerof the printer to properly configure the printer’s new local networkconfiguration, you may prefer to reset the printer’s local networkconfiguration (and in particular remove any local network password from the printer configuration) before handing over theprinter for cases where the printer is being transferred outsideyour organization. (On the other hand, even the case 4 of“DELETE PRINTER” might not call for local network configurationchanges, if you were simply performing some local testing of theprinter.) If you do need or want to clear old local networkconfiguration from a printer before transferring it, for a Polar3Dprinter use the “Reset Network” button of the local webinterface, or for a non-Polar3D printer perform a reset (such as viathe DREMEL 3D45 printer’s “FACTORY RESET” button) orsimply delete or alter the network configuration details on theprinter.

9.2.1.1 Case 2: CHANGE OWNER

If you are merely switching ownership at the same site, withoutchanging connection details (network details), and wish to allow anyother users of the printer (e.g., class or club members) to continueto use that same printer without obsoleting the existing printerqueue and history of print jobs – as for instance, when a new teacheris assigned to take over an existing class and printer – then the“CHANGE OWNER” button on the printer’s “MEMBERS” screen underthe printer manage screen, see Figure 9.11, allows the currentprinter owner to conveniently reassign printer ownership to anotherPolar Cloud member who is (individually) in the printer’s “MEMBERS” list; see Figure 9.12.

Figure 9.11: Polar Cloud printer MEMBERS screen CHANGE OWNER button

Figure 9.12: Polar Cloud printer CHANGE PRINTER OWNER pop-up screen

If the Polar Cloud member to whom you want to transferownership of the printer is not currently a “Permitted User” or“Manager” in the printer’s “MEMBERS” list, note that you will need tofirst “INVITE” the desired person to become a user or manager ofthe printer; (in particular, note that a current printer member whois solely a “Group User” must accept an invitation to become anindividual user or manager of the printer first, before you caninvite him or her to then become the printer owner). Oncethat person accepts the invitation and is (individually) inthe printer’s “MEMBERS” list, then when you click “CHANGEOWNER” that member will appear with an active (i.e., dark gray)checkbox in the list presented on the “CHANGE PRINTER OWNER”pop-up screen and may be selected as the new printer owner.

Note that with “CHANGE OWNER”, the printer “MEMBERS” will remainunchanged (other than promoting the new owner, and demoting youto printer manager status), and also the print queue and printerhistory will remain unchanged: any other printer users may continueto use the printer, any pending print jobs can continue withoutinterruption, and the printer history will retain its list of jobsperformed.

Note also, that unlike when you “INVITE” someone to manage oruse a printer, which generates an invitation which the recipient mustchoose to “ACCEPT” in order to take effect, performing “CHANGEOWNER” for a printer occurs immediately, without involving action bythe new owner.

For a non-Polar3D printer, in addition to changing the owner from the Polar Cloud point-of-view via the “CHANGE OWNER” button,the new printer owner will also need to reconfigure the printer itselfwith his or her own Polar Cloud account information (“Email” and“PIN Code”).

Depending on whether the printer is also being switched to adifferent local network, it may also be necessary to reconfigure theprinter’s local network connection information.

9.2.1.2 Cases 3 and 4: Resetting the printer or DELETEPRINTER

When a printer previously registered in the Polar Cloud ismoved to an entirely different site or organization, or is beingdrastically re-purposed, then either the printer’s old owner or newowner may wish to first de-register the printer from the PolarCloud, and then the new owner should re-register the printer toeffectively “start afresh” with the printer. The process forstarting afresh with a printer, attaching a previously usedprinter at a different site, is essentially that of attaching a newprinter to your Polar Cloud account, as overviewed in Section9.1.However, there are one or two preparatory steps that the priorowner (or you, if the prior owner omitted such steps) maywish to perform prior to transferring and re-registering theprinter.

When a Polar3D printer is moved to a new site, the prior ownermay have chosen to delete their local network profile informationfrom the printer via the “Reset Networks” button of the“Network” screen of the Polar3D printer local web interface, andmay have obsoleted their ownership of the printer in the PolarCloud via that same screen’s “Reset Printer on the PolarCloud” button or (more drastically) via the “DELETE PRINTER”button on the printer’s management “SETTINGS” screen. Performing“Reset Printer on the Polar Cloud” rather than “DELETEPRINTER” is recommended in particular when changing ownership ofa Polar3D printer in high use as it means that any remaining printjobs queued to the printer remain visible to members on a printernow named P3Dserial-digits-DELETED-date , so that memberscan move such old jobs to another printer to which the membershave access – it is less disruptive to the printer’s members than“DELETE PRINTER” (which discards all pending print jobs).

When a DREMEL 3D45 printer is moved to a new site, the priorowner may have chosen to restore the printer to factory defaults(removing their Polar Cloud account “Email” and “PIN Code”from the printer’s memory) via the DREMEL 3D45 printer’s“FACTORY RESET” button (under “TOOLS”, “SETTINGS” on theDREMEL 3D45 printer control panel). Any existing printqueue or history for that printer will then remain visible in thePolar Cloud as information for an obsolete printer now named DREMserial-digits-DELETED-date , and any existing print jobsmay potentially be moved to a different printer. Or the prior printerowner may have chosen to simply use the “DELETE PRINTER” buttonto remove the printer entirely from the Polar Cloud (discarding theprinter “MEMBERS” list, the printer history, and any existing printqueue); however, the DREMEL 3D45 printer itself likely has cachedthe Polar Cloud account details (“Email” and “PIN Code”) of theprior owner, which “DELETE PRINTER” will not affect; (so fromthe point of view of the prior printer owner, performing aphysical “FACTORY RESET” of the printer is recommended,though this discards the printer’s local network configuration aswell).

After obsoleting or deleting the printer’s prior registration in thePolar Cloud, the next issue to consider is whether the printer’s priornetwork connection configuration is still available and appropriate(as when a printer is being transferred for a new use at the samephysical site and none of its local network configuration was wipedout by the prior owner), or whether the printer’s networkconfiguration must be reconfigured. But if the local networkconfiguration was wiped out, or if the printer was previouslyconnected via some different-than-yours local network (as when youhave acquired a printer formerly used at a different site), then youwill need to start at the steps for configuring local networkuse.

If a Polar3D printer was already in use in your 3D printer lab orclassroom, so already properly configured to use your local network(and the prior owner didn’t click “Reset Networks” therebydeleting the local network profile), and you merely need to take overas its owner, then you should start your re-registration of the printerby connecting to the printer’s local web interface and clicking“Reset Printer on the Polar Cloud” on the “Network” screen;then go directly to connection step 10 (discussed in detailin Section 1.1: Connecting the Polar3D printer to the PolarCloud via WiFi of the Polar3D Printer Guide, but which isidentical whether connecting via WiFi or Ethernet cable),to add the printer to your Polar Cloud account. With theprinter turned on (and its LED lights appearing as POLAR3D,i.e.,blue over white), then from the Polar Cloud main menu select“PRINTERS” and then on that screen click the “ADD” button (“+”);see Figure 1.14 of the Polar3D Printer Guide. Then continue on atthe resulting “ADD A PRINTER” screen, entering the serial number ofthe printer, and going through the colored light security check, etc.,as discussed in Chapter 1: Get connected to the Polar Cloud of thePolar3D Printer Guide.

For a DREMEL printer, if the printer’s “FACTORY RESET” buttonwas used, that will have wiped out the printer’s local networkconfiguration, as well as obsoleting its Polar Cloud registration, soyou will need to re-perform local network connection for the printer.Then register the printer to your Polar Cloud account, asdiscussed in the Dremel 3D45: Connecting to the Polar Cloudguide.