Today we’d like to introduce you to Tim & Bridget Ayres.
Hi Tim & Bridget, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
What started as a hobby years ago quickly turned into a passion for both of us and a few years later we were opening the doors at our first commercial location in Arlington. Although we began with a focus on portraiture, the community and clients told us what they needed most and we gradually turned into a 3dscanning/3d design/3dprinting studio that takes on a vast array of projects, ranging anywhere from creating custom parts for vehicles, replacing broken gears in beloved Christmas decorations that have been handed down through the generations, designing diving helmets to be cast in bronze, to reproducing or enlarging statues for local sculptors/artists and Amon Carter Museum of American Art- in addition to being able to 3dscan and 3dprint figurines or bobbleheads and other custom products starring our clients!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As other businesses have, we faced our hardest challenges from the Covid-19 pandemic. We could suddenly no longer scan anyone, so we immediately began 3dprinting as many face shields as we could (the NIH has a 3dprint exchange with 3dmodels approved for use by medical personnel). We weren’t exclusively doing 3dportraits at that point, but it was a large part of our business. Our journey remaining afloat turned out to be blessing in heavy disguise, though, because after other means of production began to catch up to provide PPE for the true heroes of the pandemic, we still couldn’t 3dscan anyone in person and started taking on all kinds of jobs. We had to remodel the interior of our studio so we could close off the 3dscanning room and allow people to unmask in there only at the time of their scans, and that took a while- so while we’re happy to be able to 3dscan and 3dprint people again, we can no longer imagine being a studio that mostly does 3dportraits and wouldn’t turn back for anything! Every week is different and our jobs are really exciting!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
We are an engineer/artist (Tim/Bridget) team working together to do everything here, ourselves, and that means maintaining and modifying our own3dprinters and writing code to automate certain tasks to developing some of our own materials to use in 3dprinters and perfecting unique finishes that aren’t offered by any other 3dprinting companies out there. Tim began developing powders for our studio during his pursuit of a Masters of Engineering in Additive Manufacturing and Design at Penn State (first-degree program of its kind in the country), which he completed last fall. He continues to add new 3d printing technologies to our offerings while using his 20+ years engineering experience to design just about anything a person can dream up. Bridget has been pushing the boundaries of the decorative potential of gypsum binder jet 3dprints since right after we opened here in Arlington when she first tried and succeeded in finding a way to deposit a layer of real metal on the outsides of these 3dprints, which can then be finished like other metals using patinas and waxes, etc. Taking tints and other resin additives into account, the finishing possibilities are virtually unlimited, and we look forward to the yet undiscovered combinations! Her finishes can be seen on several sets of statues used by Amon Carter Museum in their educational and access programs. Together (barring copyright violations), we can make a physical copy of all kinds of objects, and it’s an awesome power that comes with responsibility. But yeah, we giggle about it sometimes because it’s pretty cool when it comes down to it.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
We’ve learned to be flexible and adaptable because every day is different!
Contact Info:
- Email: 3DLirious@gmail.com
- Website: 3dlirious.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3dlirious/
