Lowery Sewing and Vacuum Center has found a decidedly low-tech use for a new piece of high-tech equipment on the shelf. The store on East Winona Avenue started selling 3D printers after third-generation owner Adam Harman saw one demonstrated at a trade show in February. “There’s a limited amount of time between when they’re all over the places and when they’re still pretty cool and not everybody has one,” he said. “I thought it was pretty cool and I thought I would bring a few here and sell them. Plus I love gadgets.” He noted that though the printer can produce just about anything you could imagine, the most practical use they found around the store so far is crafting a special part to convert new sewing machines into treadle machines for Amish customers. He held up the 3D printed plastic handwheel he uses for the conversion, which the printer lays down one-tenth of a millimeter at a time over the course of about five hours by melting down a spool of plastic filament. Then he brought out two boxes full of other objects he printed to demonstrate what the gadget can do – train tracks, a flexible bracelet, skeleton parts, big chess pieces and an articulated doll, printed one arm and leg at a time with enough precision to socket them together. He also showed off a small green bust of his own head, made by scanning a 360-degree view of himself with a smartphone app. Many of the objects are sturdy enough you could stand on them, he noted, since they’re printed with a honeycomb structure internally that gives them strength. There are different types of plastic in addition to different colors, which can change the texture of the final product or even make it glow in the dark. Instructions for printables are available at sites like thingiverse.com, or your own digital 3D creation can be converted for printer use by programs like Tinkercad, Harman said. Printing time can range anywhere from 30 minutes to eight hours, depending on the size and intricacy of the object. The printer he sells at Lowery can make something as large as 6x6x9 inches, which is “as big as most people need.” There’s a learning curve to using a 3D printer, he remarked, and it may take some trial and error to get it right. “Even the air temperature in the room makes some difference ... It’s not like running a piece of paper through a copy machine.” The printers are especially useful in classrooms, he said, where students learning fractions or scale can design something digitally then have a physical representation at the end of the process. When the Warsaw School Corp. was looking for printers, he said he was able to provide them with twice as many at the same price they would have paid a large company. “It’s almost a no-brainer for a school to have one,” he remarked.
