There is a new store in downtown Sanford that offers a variety of products and services that aren’t always easy to find.
Digital Dragon 3D held a soft opening on Jan. 17, and will hold an official grand opening on Feb. 7 at 10 a.m. The store is located at 152 N. Steele St.
“Our store is unique,” said Luke Ingerman, who along with his wife, Jennifer, owns the store. “We sell household 3D printers, printing filaments and other necessary items for maintaining the machines. We also have a dedicated maintenance area and prototyping supplies.”
He said that opening the shop gave him a chance to sell these items locally so people can come in and see and ask questions.
“We have our retail area up front with our two main filament suppliers, which is EPAX, who is located in Morrisville, but they have their warehouse located in Sanford, and filaments by Bamboo Lab,” he said. “We will be stocking the Bamboo Lab printers here in the near future as well.”
Ingerman has built 3D printers and shows his methods on his Twitch channel. He has a variety of 3D printers and custom printers that are mainstream.
“We also have an area in back where we will be printing stuff for our local businesses,” he said. “We’re trying to reach out to them, whether it’s pictures, displays, anything that can be used to help you in your day-to-day business. We could set up a jig, or make picture display stands. We can even make custom little swag — keychains or things like that. You can 3D print almost anything. The big question comes down to — do you really need it to be custom printed? 3D printing is for the times that customization would really help.”
Digital Dragon can also help if you’ve got an idea for a product.
“3D printing is a great means of prototyping,” he said. “We want to do prototyping for some of the businesses in the local area and throughout the country. We can hep validate your prototype. Then we can have the discussion of should it be injection molding or something done on CNC (machining) or different production models. It depends on the scale.”
Digital Dragon also will feature a space and host “make day” for people to come and work on projects.
“We’ll also be dong some classes here in the near future,” he said.
Ingerman said he got his first 3D printer as a Father’s Day and master’s degree gift to himself in in 2017, and he has been hooked ever since.
“It just kind of took off from there,” he said. “I was talked into starting a stream on Twitch, and I was doing some of my builds and mods on Twitch live streaming. I’ve built about 32 printers now — some for me, some for others. It’s just something that I have a passion for.”
The store came about when Ingerman decided he needed shop space.
“I knew I needed to get some of these out of the house,” he said. “We wanted to have somewhere that we could connect with people. 3D printing is one of the most inclusive communities out there.”
Digital Dragon came from Ingerman’s childhood.
“I grew up with Lord of The Rings and dragons, the medieval type,” he said. “My background is in cybersecurity, so Digital Dragon just kind of melded.”
The business is also launching a program to connect the community through 3D printing. Ingerman said the first project is “Dragon Eggs,” which they will be collecting from community makers.
“We understand that not everyone has multiple 3D machines, but they may have other mediums such as metalworking and molding scraps to create an awesome dragon-scale egg,” he said.
As for the hours of the business, Monday is by appointment only, then Tuesday — Saturday they are open from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. and on Sundays from noon to 7 p.m.
“We can also get here earlier or stay later if people need us,” he said, adding that folks can stop to visit with him or Jonathan Disselkoen. “We both love to talk about 3D printing.”
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