Your Friends for Quality 3D Printing Services
Welcome to our cozy corner of the printing world, right here in the heart of Argyll, where we treat every project as our own.
We are a not-for-profit team that prints 3D designs for community projects, schools and community scientists, artists and disabled/chronically ill people like us who might need replacement parts or custom designs.
Let us help bring your ideas to life with the warmth and care they deserve - and a little bit of colour while we’re at it!
About Us
At Tinkers Inc., we treat each project as our own, prioritizing quality and care in every step.
Our team is dedicated to bringing your visions to life, from 3D designs from your favourite creators to custom pieces to replace broken equipment. If you’ve got a project for your community, charity, or personal accessibility needs, we can figure out a way to do it, using CAD design and our 3D printers.
From specialised gaming controllers to deep sea equipment, from tap turners for arthritic fingers to replacing that bit of plastic that snapped off your lawnmower and stops it from working; if you have a design, we can print it. One of our favourite places for designs, Cults, gives you an idea of what is possible. If you have an idea, but no clue how to design it, we can help too.
We don’t take money for our prints, but instead ask for filament donations, as well as donations to recycle old filament/failed prints. It’s part of our commitment to making as little an environmental impact as possible.
As we are both disabled/chronically ill ourselves, we operate on a first-come, first served basis. If a project is complex, we may concentrate on one project alone for a while before taking on more work, to make sure we get things just right. We’re slower than more able-bodied folk, but thorough.
Get in touch and we will see what we can do for you!
Our Projects
Here are a few examples of the pieces we’ve done for clients and for our own use.
As you can see most of this is for accessibility use, but we are also keen to work on sustainability. If we can prevent a household appliance going to landfill by printing a replacement part, that is a win in our book!
We'd also love to support citizen scientist projects like this project by Dr Andrew Thaler to help study coastal waterways.
Here's how it Works:
We are not for profit and take no income but running costs for our work.
Tinkers Inc. exists because we enjoy the printing process and would like to make this tech available to everyone. Instead of charging for services, we have set up a wishlist with Amazon.uk for filament, which is the biggest expense for us (for now, we don’t like them either, but will be looking out for other places to purchase filament in the near future). Buy a roll of filament if you’re so inclined to help us with our projects, or if there’s a specific colour you want to use for your 3D print, and that will do!
When we catch up with filament requirements, we use remaining donations for recycling plastic prints that didn’t work on a quarterly basis. The 3D printing process creates a lot of plastic waste, and thankfully our partners at Filamentive have a solution: sending our 3D printing waste in for recycling into new filament. Due to the shipping costs and our remote location, we need support in sending off our recycling boxes, which is where community support comes in.
When we have enough donations for filament and have reached our quarterly goal for sending off filament for recycling, we will CLOSE the donation page. So if you see the donation page is down, don’t worry: we’re still operating, we’re just all caught up thanks to your generosity! When we need support with materials again, we’ll let everyone know.
We hope to set up a similar program of donations for filament with other partners so we can stop using Amazon, so if that interests you, get in touch!
Things we WON’T Print:
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No weapons
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No sex toys (PLA isn’t safe!)
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No racist/phobic/hatery fascist stuff (Mrs Tinker is from Minnesota and has some very choice words for ICE-like/Reformy behaviour)
Get In Touch
Interested in working together?
Let us know how we can help and we will get in touch with you and soon as we can.
As we are both disabled, please be aware we work primarily via email messages, but we can arrange video calls or set up ways to assist your project once we begin communications.
We can’t wait to hear from you!