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Lab Etiquette and Cleanliness

MItHRIL shares valuable, often expensive equipment across Ingenuity Labs (Mitchell 395), Walter Light Hall 704/706, and the makerspace, alongside other lab members and, in the case of WLH 704/706, another research group entirely (see Lab Facilities). This page sets out concrete expectations for keeping these shared spaces usable, on top of the general cleanup rule already stated in the Robots and Equipment Policy.

The short version: if you didn't clean it up, someone else has to, and that someone is a labmate who has better things to do with their time.

General Rules

  • Clean as you go, not at the end of a long session. Waiting until you're tired and want to leave is exactly when cleanup gets skipped. Build tidying into natural breaks in your work rather than treating it as the last, most skippable step.
  • Return tools and shared equipment to where you found them. If there's a labelled storage location, use it. If you're not sure where something belongs, ask rather than leaving it wherever is convenient.
  • Leave workbenches and benchtop equipment clear for the next person. Making a mess while you work is fine; leaving it for someone else to clean up before they can start their own work is not.
  • No food or drink near electronics, robots, or fabrication equipment. Spills near expensive hardware are a preventable disaster. Eat and drink at your desk or in a common area, not at a workbench or next to a robot.
  • Label anything you need to leave out. If a project genuinely needs to occupy a shared workbench or piece of equipment for longer than a working session, put a visible note with your name, contact information, and the date you expect to be done, per the existing Robots and Equipment Policy. An unlabelled mess left overnight will be treated as abandoned and may be cleared.
  • Report damage or malfunctions immediately rather than quietly leaving broken equipment for the next person to discover the hard way. Place a note on anything broken or malfunctioning so no one else tries to use it before it's assessed.

Makerspace and Fabrication Equipment

The lab's fabrication equipment (3D printers, and any laser cutters or other makerspace tools) has its own specific etiquette on top of the general rules above; see the individual equipment pages for details specific to each machine, such as Bambu Lab H2C and Elegoo Saturn S. In general:

  • Never interrupt, pause, or remove someone else's job in progress without checking with them first.
  • Clean the work surface (build plate, cutting bed, etc.) after your own job before walking away.
  • Report failed jobs and equipment jams rather than just clearing the mess and leaving the underlying problem for the next person.
  • Store materials (filament, resin, sheet stock) properly rather than leaving them out on shared surfaces.

Robots and Experimental Setups

  • Cordon off active robot workspaces using stanchions, per the Robots and Equipment Policy, and remove the cordon once you're done so the space isn't left blocked off unnecessarily.
  • Break down temporary experimental setups (rigs, props, sensor mounts) once your data collection is complete, unless you've made prior arrangements to leave them up.
  • Return any furniture, tables, or shared props you moved for an experiment to their original location.

If a Mess Becomes a Pattern

The lab director may follow up directly with anyone whose mess is repeatedly left for others to clean up. Repeated disregard for shared-space etiquette will be treated the same way as other unprofessional conduct under the Professionalism page, and access to specific equipment or spaces may be restricted if it continues.

Migration note: this page is newly authored to strengthen and consolidate the lab's prior one-line cleanup expectation (still stated in the Robots and Equipment Policy) into a fuller, more concrete etiquette policy specific to Ingenuity Labs and WLH 704. It did not exist on the original SharePoint site. Please review the escalation language in the last section and adjust to match how you actually want to handle repeat offenders.