Monday 2 April 2012

3D printing jewellery with Shapeways: One month in.

I've been playing around with the Autodesk 123D Beta and Shapeways for just over a month now, so I wanted to write a little report of what I've managed over the past month.

Tumblr



I've created a tumblr blog especially for images of the growing mountain of jewellery that will be generated over time by me. Follow it and eventually you will see photographs of the pieces up there as well as the computer generated renders of the designs before they have been printed.

Pendants



I've designed, modelled in CAD software and uploaded nine designs for pendants, and each has been listed publicly and are available for sale in both sterling silver and a translucent plastic known on the Shapeways site as "Frosted Ultra Detail".

Click Pendants to see them all.

Earrings



I've modelled matching pairs of earrings for each of the nine pendant designs, again in sterling silver and Frosted Ultra Detail.

Click Earrings to see them all.

Cuff-links



I've also designed and modelled the matching pairs of cuff-links for each of the nine pendant designs, available only in sterling silver, and a glossier sterling silver for a little extra [the cuff-links are polished/buffed before they are sent to you].

Click Cuff-links to see them all.




COMING SOON:-

Photos of the earrings and pendants

Yesterday I put through an order for all of the earrings and pendants designed so far. They should be shipped by April 18th at the latest so I should have them ready for photos by the end of next month. I've been looking at potential models and photographers for a shoot, but nothing has been decided just yet...

Bangles to go with each set

My "homework" for the next week is to get ready the matching set of bangles for sale - that's designed, modelled AND uploaded. Thankfully, my experience with the software I'm using has grown a lot over the past month and I'm now able to complete such tasks a lot more quickly and efficiently than I could in the beginning.

Charm Beads

I've been looking into creating the designs on a much smaller scale for charm beads, potentially in the threaded charm bead style or the Italian charm bead style... We'll see how it goes over the next month.

Rings

To complete the collection of each design, I will be working on ring versions for each design this month. I have no idea how I want to do it yet, but I intend to make them fit in with the rest of the collection in sterling silver and possibly Frosted Ultra Detail. We shall see.

A new collection of designs

We've been having lovely weather in Cardiff over the past week, and all that nice weather made me ditch my laptop for the little 2 by 3 inch notebook I made a while back. I had to make sure I was doing some kind of work while I enjoyed the nice weather during my self-enforced work hours, and ended up drawing up some nice designs based on circles and Fibonacci numbers. Keep an eye out for those in the next couple of months. Here's a sneaky peek:



I'm really looking forward to next month!