Useful things, made strong, reliable — beautiful.
A small shop with functional and aesthetic 3D-printed parts — original designs created at the foot of Mt. Hood.
A note from the founder
“When a person walks the world tinkering and connecting and configuring, they end up making things... Beautiful things sometimes. And it becomes a shame not to share them.Jeff Hawkins Founder · GateIron, LLC
For Sale, Free, or Made to Order?
3D printing suffers from the inverse square law. Making something twice as big will increase its cost by 4x, and its risk of print failure by even more. Larger things are just harder to make cost effective. Adding to the difficulty, the cost of shipping basically doubles the cost of any inexpensive item.
This means that only some of my best designs make sense to sell. You'll find the most useful or distinct things there. My intent is to have a lot of $10 items that solve $20 problems. Or $100 problems even. Some $6 items will hopefully be worth buying even with an additional $6 shipping fee. But I'll also participate in Etsy's free shipping for orders over $35, and will try very hard to keep enough things stocked that this can be a great deal.
What about all of the things that don't make sense to sell... Things that just cost too much to be viable products, given business overhead and shipping? Well, good news... I tend to give those away for free, in the form of downloadable self-printable models on Printables. If you have a 3D printer, have a look. Frankly there are a few things there that I do also sell, for those without access to a 3D printer.
In addition to the shop and the open source designs on Printables, I am also happy to take on custom work. Whether it is just to print something I'm not offering in the shop, or to design a solution for your custom needs, please send me an email about it to get the ball rolling. (I am still a full time teacher, and can't have my phone going off in class. So email is the contact option for now.)
Complete parts and products via the store
Secure checkout, real reviews, and tracked shipping, all handled by Etsy.
Self-printable designs via Printables
50+ free designs on Printables. Know someone with kids? Someone who likes Minecraft? Try GridLink Art, a 2D linking-tile system with clean, high-contrast squares — perfect for recreating pixelated art.
See the free filesWhat GateIron stands for
No junk. On purpose.
The sole purpose of this business is to distribute my solutions to people who will benefit from them. My prices need to be low enough that those who see the value I provide will not be turned back by them. But I also didn't get into this to make junk. Everything I sell is going to be the best I can reasonably produce. And the price is going to be whatever it needs to be in order to keep that quality up.
Original by design.
There is no point in 3D printing anything that can be acquired without 3D printing — No point in designing my version of something that already exists, unless I am going to change it in a way that no one else is doing. That is what is here. At least until others steal my designs, what you'll find here is different and better in significant ways than similar things you may find elsewhere.
Made in Hood River, by one person with a unique way of looking at things.
Jeff Hawkins is a 20+ year systems developer, turned technology instructor, turned business owner — who among other things, hopes to validate the statement, "You could sell that", which he sometimes says to his students.
Made here, one batch at a time.
Print one of the free designs, or pick up something from the shop — either way, I hope you enjoy it.