When Rick Stroh bought an old combine header several years ago, he was warned that the manufacturer of the farm equipment had gone out of business long ago. The previous owner advised there would be no way to buy replacements for the many broken fingers on the header. But Stroh was not dissuaded.

“I thought, there’s got to be somebody that can make them,” he recalled.

After asking around a bit, Stroh connected with Alex Baker, a fellow Powell farmer who does some 3D printing as a hobby.

Baker agreed to take on the challenge of remanufacturing the parts for the header.

He took careful measurements of one of the intact fingers with calipers, created a 3D rendering and did some experimentation.

“Making sure they fit was the big thing,” Baker explained. “[You] don’t want to print 300 of them and none of them fit right, so there’s definitely some prototyping.”

It took his printer over 100 hours and five spools of PETG (polyethylene terephthalate glycol) filament to create the 350-plus individual pieces.

Baker and Stroh had discussed the possibility of making them a patriotic mix of red, white and blue, but settled on black; Baker’s research indicated the dark hue is the most resistant to the sun’s ultra-violet rays, which is what made the original parts brittle.

Stroh quickly put the freshly printed fingers to the test, using the header to harvest gluten-free oats in 2023. The new parts made it through the season in good shape — and they’re still holding strong today, even after sitting idle in the Wyoming elements over the past two years. 

Baker “did an awesome job,” Stroh said.

The header fingers represented the biggest print job Baker has completed and the only one he’s done for hire (he charged a couple bucks per piece). However, he occasionally crafts parts for his and his family’s own farming operations.

A few years ago, Baker’s grandfather went to put a specialized, fertilizer-delivering wet kit on a planter and found it was missing an odd-shaped crush washer. Without the piece, “I think we would have had to buy a whole new kit,” Baker said, but he was able to design and print a replacement.

Similarly, he was able to craft a new end cap last winter to help fasten a rolling tarp on a trailer.

Trying to locate those more obscure parts on Amazon or other online marketplaces can take time, Baker said, followed by a week or two of waiting for them to arrive. But with a 3D printer, he can instead go home, spend a couple hours creating and refining some prototypes and have a part ready to go the next day.

“That’s where the value of that [printing] is,” he said, “is for hard-to-find stuff or can’t-find stuff.”

Stroh also noted that the number of local stores carrying ag equipment has dwindled over the years.

“Without people like Alex [Baker] that can make that stuff … the header’s no good,” Stroh said, “so it’s awesome people do that [printing].”

Stroh has been impressed enough with the technology that he’s thought about buying his own printer, noting they can be used for just about anything.

Baker also enjoys printing models of farm equipment and “trinkets” like cupholders, “but the practical stuff is pretty interesting,” he said, “because it shows that, I think, 3D printing … is not a gimmick.”

“It’s not going to replace manufacturing,” he said, “but there’s a spot for it.”