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HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY PortlandTHURSDAY, JULY 3, 2014 • TWICE CHOSEN THE NATION’S BEST NONDAILY PAPER Tribune • PORTLANDTRIBUNE.COM • PUBLISHED TUESDAY AND THURSDAY 3D printed prosthetic hands City road can be manufactured q uickly, cheaply and to perfectly fi t. Need a larger siz e? plan still Just print a new one. Here K ristofer Beem of Portland- based RapidMade displays a hand his stuck in fi rm printed for an Astoria youth TRIBUNE PHOTO: JONATHAN HOUSE the muck R esidents balk at price of new streets despite cost cuts By STEV E LAW The Tribune The city of Portland’s plan to foster more paving of gravel and dirt roads in residen- tial neighborhoods is stuck in a rut. Since the City Council approved then-Mayor Sam Adams’ Out of the Mud plan in November 2012, not a single road has been paved un- “ We j ust der the program. Portland has an embarrass- want to be ing 45 miles of gravel and dirt able to streets in residential areas and drive on the city spends little to address the problem. The city has long our road. expected neighbors to cover I’ d like my the costs — about $72,000 for a home on a 50-foot-wide lot for a son to be regular road. able to ride Out of the Mud, since re- named Street by Street, shaved a bike in up to 80 percent off those costs front of his by allowing bare-bones con- own home.” struction: a narrow asphalt LIFE IN strip for vehicles in the middle — Willie Sprague 3-D of the road and no require- ments for sidewalks, curbs, storm drainage and paved parking areas. Since the program was created, there’ve been By PETER K ORN positioned to take advantage of 54 citizen inquiries about it, says Christine Le- The Tribune ■ Portland M akers are early that revolution. But some say if on, who heads up the program for the Portland that’s the intention, the city has a Bureau of Transportation. But so far, no neigh- Nebraska violinist want- ways to go. bors have stepped up to approve a local im- ed to design and con- adopters of printing technology Many of the heralded “break- provement district to pay for the slimmed-down struct a customized vio- throughs” using 3-D printing are roads, she says. A lin for his wife using his that’s on verge of going mainstream teasers — new uses that provide The most recent project to hit the skids was own ideas, but he had no experi- creative thinkers with a sense of on Oberlin Avenue in North Portland, where ence as an instrument maker. possibilities. David Perry’s 3-D- neighbors have spent thousands of dollars in An Astoria boy, born without was nearly impossible. holds the promise for corporations printed fi ddle, which he recently recent years to fi ll potholes with gravel and most of his right hand, could not Each of these problems found a and individuals to print out their displayed at the White House, is a hire a company to grade the street, says Tim fi nd a prosthetic that fi t properly. quick and cheap solution in Port- own three-dimensional objects as perfect example. A home-printed Cowan, who used to live there and now rents A custom-made prosthetic hand land because of a new easily as we now electric violin that produces au- out his old house. would cost tens of thousands of technology that no print paper docu- thentic music? Cool. Wider appli- About eight years ago, Cowan tried to rally dollars. less than President ments on inkjet cations? Consider it a starting neighbors on Oberlin to approve a local im- Hillsboro fi lmmaker Laika need- Barack Obama, in his TribSeries printers. Local pro- point, Perry says, then start con- provement district or LID to pay for the road ed a process so that each of its State of the Union ad- FIRST OF TWO STORIES moters of the crafts sidering the possibilities. paving, but it would have cost about $45,000 per puppet/characters could constant- dress last year, hailed and tech communi- Mechanical engineer Perry homeowner. Still, neighbors wouldn’t go for it, ly change expression. Construct- as “the next revolution in manu- ties say Portland, with its abun- moved to Portland in 2010 and Cowan says. ing thousands of new model faces facturing.” dance of young creatives im- See 3-D / Page 2 for each character in each scene Its proponents say 3-D printing mersed in a DIY ethic, is perfectly See ROADS / Page 11 Willie Sprague measures a 16-inch rut in the dirt road in front of his house. He’ s seen three motorists get stuck and req uire a tow PHOTO COURTESY: RAPIDMADE INC. truck to get out; he once lost the wheel of his TRIBUNE PHOTO: JONATHAN HOUSE “ That’ s the whole big deal. This didn’ t ex ist A 3D printer ( above) works much like a inkj et printer, but it deposits a resin truck and instead of ink. The resin builds up layer by layer as the printer makes before. There was no way to make it. You can ruptured two oil pans. thousands of passes, producing the two obj ects on the right, surrounded by design from the inside out.” — Micah Chaban, RapidMade Inc. ex cess resin. TRIBUNE PHOTO: STEV E LAW Nonprofi t puts faith in homeless help her three young boys in odist Church of Portland called N ew C ity I nitiative Portland. In March, she be- Goose Hollow. When it came teaches congregations gan her transition from stay- time to move out of the shelter, Rachel ing in a shelter to living in a she turned to the New City Ini- Henderson and how to lend a hand home of her own. The move tiative, an organization that her sons, Jessie, wouldn’t have been possible, teaches churches and syna- 4, and Isaac, 10 , By STEFANIE DONAHUE Henderson says, without gogues how they can directly found help The Tribune faith, and the city’s faith help homeless families. through the community. The organization partners V illage Support For three years, Rachel Henderson and her children with local faith communities to Network. Henderson grappled with were living in a family shelter TRIBUNE PHOTO: homelessness while raising run by the First United Meth- See NEW CITY / Page 5 JAIME V ALDEZ “Pamplin Media Group’s pledge is to Portland Tribune deliver balanced news that refl ects the SHONI SHINES stories of our communities. Thank you — SEE SPORTS, PAGE B10 for reading our newspapers.” Inside — DR. ROBERT B. PAMPLIN JR. OWNER & NEIGHBOR A2 NEWS The Portland Tribune Thursday, July 3, 2014 3-D: Printers can create customized pieces ■ ness with them,” Beem says. From page 1 Hewlett-Packard, Under Ar- mour and Daimler are clients. Curious about worked at a few design fi rms Most of RapidMade’s work in- 3-D printing? before attending an open- volves prototyping. They get source hardware summit in digital fi les sent from manufac- Portland is still a DIY New York City. The conference turers who want to display a community at heart, and in opened his eyes to the future of small model of their product the nascent world of 3-D 3-D printing even as he saw and RapidMade can produce printing that means South- that most of the items on dis- them quickly and relatively east Portland-based ADX is play were toys and curios. cheaply. the place where curious “I needed to make something Chaban and Beem are espe- Portlanders can get intro- functional and meaningful,” he cially excited about the prod- duced to the technology. says. ucts they can help clients de- ADX is the digital design Perry had played violin for sign and produce that simply version of the city’s tool- years so he decided to create a could not be created using tra- sharing community. digital fi le that would represent ditional manufacturing that ADX opened in 2011 as a a violin in three dimensions. relies on molds or sculpting space where people inter- Rather than keep the project to away bits of mass. ested in wood and metal himself, Perry, true to the Port- The RapidMade offices are working could take class- land DIY spirit, open-sourced full of intricate products that es, use equipment at little all his work so that others look like 3-D versions of M.C. cost, and meet one another. around the country could try to Escher paintings. One is a lat- By 2012, the nonprofi t had build on what he created. ticed curtain with tiny pieces of purchased a $2,000 3-D Perry’s fi ddle bears some re- plastic linked together inside printer and set aside a part semblance to a wooden instru- other chain mail-like curtains. of its workshop for digital ment, but is clearly designed TRIBUNE PHOTOS: JONATHAN HOUSE Another is a cube with dozens design. for functionality. Its beauty From left, K ristofer Beem, David Shapiro and Micah Chaban show off some of the products made by their 3D of shapes wrapping around one The technology is so sim- comes from a different quality printing fi rm, RapidMade. another but never touching ple, says ADX 3-D printing than the sensuous curves and each other inside. technician Mike Bartell, delicate craftsmanship of a tra- “That’s the whole big deal,” that a one-hour, $36 work- ditional violin. For instance, Chaban says.