Temporary ‘premium silver’ 3D printing service launched

3D NEWS> 3D PRINTING

3D printing and online marketplace Shapeways has announced a service to produce professional grade silver jewellery.

‘Premium Silver’ combines the usual process with manual polishing to produce an ‘amazing finish’.

The jewellery is made using a three stage process.  Firstly, the design is printed use a high resolution 3D wax printer.  This is placed within a container of liquid plaster.  Once the liquid plaster sets, the wax creation is melted, leaving a hollowed shape of the design.  Liquid silver is poured in after that hardens, the plaster is removed and the product is revealed.

Three sterling silver types can be selected – regular, glossy and premium and it’s the ‘premium’ option that requires a high level of manual intervention. Premium Silver is highly hand polished to a "wet" sheen and looks very shiny.  Regular silver is mechanically polished so may show print lines and have a rougher surface texture.  Glossy is lightly hand polished to achieve a smooth finish but still can have some surface texture.

A Premium Silver design will cost $262.50 for a 3.5 cm3 item.

Premium Silver                                                   Glossy Silver

Shapeways warn that the polishing process can remove finer details and smooth out sharp edges and that the company will evaluate whether to keep the service permanent after the trial is over on May 14th.

Anyone with a vivid imagination can now potentially sell professional silver jewellery around the world without any fulfilment costs.  Shapeways offer a personal online shop service where people can sell their designs after uploading STL, Collada, OBJ, X3D or VRML2 files.  Shapeways will then print to order.

Jewellery designers have benefitted hugely from 3D printing in terms of bespoke options and reduced costs.  A good example of this is the ‘waveform ring’ by Japanese artist and designer Sakurako Shimizu,

Made using a 3D printing and casting method instead of laser-cutting techniques the ring is engraved with the waveform of a couple saying “I do.” – you don’t get much more bespoke than that!

In other 3D printing news Stratasys has joined with KOR EcoLogic to produce a 3D printed road-worthy car by 2015.

Using thermoplastics, the car is expected to consist of 40 large 3D printed parts and will carry two passengers up to 70 miles per hour.

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