RR 3D printing business featured in River of Lights

ALBUQUERQUE — River of Lights is back in Albuquerque for its annual holiday cheer, but this year a Rio Rancho business took part in some of the preparation.

Alt 3D printing shop, which has a home at the corner of Sundt Road and NM 528, has some printed pieces in the show.

“We 3-D-printed butterflies, and they’re on display. So if you go down those River of Lights, you’ll see a bunch of glowing butterflies. But while we were doing that, we did a project for Blake’s Lotaburger for the same event. So we did two little Blake’s Lotaburgers that are displayed at the River of Lights as well,” owner James Lewis said.

Lewis has wanted to participate in River of Lights for a while.

“I went to the River of Lights for our project because I told them I wanted to be a part of it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. And he said, ‘Cool. Let’s do it.’ And then we talked about the project, he said he wanted butterflies; we designed some butterflies and we printed them. While we were doing that, Blake’s Lotaburger heard about what we were doing and they asked us to design little buildings for them, too. It was pretty cool,” he said.

He explained that they started with traditional print machines and resin printers when the business began.

“We were doing a lot of miniatures and toys and little things like that, but I wanted to do more stuff and let people know that there was more than toys and trinkets to 3-D printing, that it can be an actual business,” he said.

Alt 3D started with a stimulus check, according to Lewis. He bought his first 3-D printer then.

“I already knew a thing or two about business because I’ve done a lot of work for other people in town. So I built my own website, got it up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, everything, and just started posting everything everywhere, telling everyone about it and then just reaching out to other companies and letting them know, ‘We can make this,’ so we’ve done various things,” he said.

They’ve done some more complex prints from fish tank lids to little buildings to butterflies and even model cars.

“It’s definitely a viable business. We also service the local community here because we get a lot of people that they have something that’s really old and it broke and can’t find a part for it or you know, someone wants a custom piece of jewelry that they can’t find somewhere. We’ve made light casings for Christmas lights for a house, and there’s room to hide all his Christmas lights under his house. So we’ve done things like that, too. So there is functionality with 3-D printing,” Lewis said.

He added that he has always been “technologically inclined” and always wanted his own business.

The River of Lights projects brought a new challenge to the table for Lewis, though.

There were some challenges in creating the designs. Mainly, the size of the pieces and the time frame in which they needed to be completed were an obstacle.

“There was a lot of challenges that I didn’t really account for. When we got signed up, the first step was we needed a designer. Luckily, we came into a designer at the right time and he was able to design the butterflies exactly how we wanted. So we went off of a crystal theme. We wanted them to look “crystally,” or like rocks. We did a low poly butterfly design that took a couple weeks. It took him a couple weeks to design it,” he said.

Another issue that came up rather quickly was the size and how long they took to make.

“They’re pretty big, and they take a very long time to make. We didn’t have the machine at the time; all we had was the resin printer ... and the butterfly alone is about 12 inches long. So it wasn’t going to be feasible ... and my girlfriend went and bought the biggest, nicest printer that she could and we printed all of them on that,” he said.

He said printing the butterflies took more than 90 hours, and the Lottaburger buildings took 85 hours.

“The Blake’s Lottaburger buildings, when we started doing that, they called us a week before the River of Lights started and those buildings, I was like, ‘Yeah, we’ll just do it for free.’ I thought they were going to be little buildings,” Lewis said. “And the designer sends them over to me and (big). I was like, ‘Dude, that can’t be right. She said that they were miniature.’ He’s like, ‘Nope, that’s the scale.’ Even with our large printer, we had to quarter the building. So we had to print each section at separate times and then glue it together. Each part of that building took 30 hours to print,” he said.

He said that it wouldn’t have been possible without some friends of his that volunteered their time.

He acknowledged that a lot of people have been involved with 3-D printing as of late but pointed out that most people are geared toward the craft side of things.

“When I started Alt 3D two years ago, I did all the market research. There’s one place in town doing it, and they were in Albuquerque and it was Road Runner 3D. I saw people at a craft fair, and they were doing little stuff like all these little trinkets and stuff. I started asking them about it, and they said I should get a 3-D printer to start a business,” Lewis said.

He says not many people are aware of the potential with 3-D printing.

“We’re here to educate the general public on more 3-D printing. So I’m going to start doing more educational videos and training seminars to help people understand. We even had a customer not too long ago we were doing work for, and they were an older couple, and she’s like, ‘I just don’t understand. It seems kind of silly.’ Her husband hit me up because he’s a woodworker and he was trying to make these custom puzzle pieces that he couldn’t cut with his wood machine. And I told her, ‘This is where 3-D printing is useful,’ because you have a special machine and it can’t make it, our special machine can make it and it’s not expensive,” he said.

There is potential, according to him, for 3-D printing to not only help businesses and locals but also to help the medical field as well. Some hospitals are already exploring possibilities with 3-D-printed implants and joints.

While the butterflies and Blake’s Lottaburger prints are not anything like that kind of work, Lewis says they have helped the River of Lights go into the future.

Should people have questions or 3-D print needs, Alt 3D is next to Zia Signs, which gave Lewis a more permanent location.