i.Materialise Glitters with Gold and Silver

3D print service i.Materialise now offers printing in Gold and Silver metals. They're not the first service to offer this ability, but it's wonderful to see another golden service. 

 

Specifics: In addition to the sterling silver, there are three colors of 14 kt gold offered, bright yellow, reddish tinge and white gold available. Prints can be made with up to 0.3mm resolution. The maximum size of these prints is only 88x63x125mm - but if it wasn't limited by size, it would be limited by your pocketbook, as printing in gold and silver is quite expensive. 

 

There's one catch: the i.Materialise print farm doesn't actually print gold and silver directly. Instead, they print a wax model of your design first, and then they use the "lost wax casting" method to produce an actual metal object made of solid gold (or silver). Finally, they finish it off with a lot of hand polishing, which should take out any lines from the 0.3mm resolution printing. 

 

Actually, there are two catches. The second is that the lost wax casting method cannot be used on arbitrary shapes. Any embedded or looped objects just won't work. i.Materialise says, for example, that the "ball within a ball" or "chain links" are forbidden. Polishing also requires the ability to reach all surfaces. A detailed design guide describes all these nuances in detail for designers.  

 

We foresee a great deal of imaginative jewelry appearing now that there are good gold/silver 3D printing options available to designers.   

 

Via i.Materialise

Shapeways Goes For Gold. And Bronze.

It's not exactly the Olympics, but Shapeways can now print in Gold and Bronze finishes thanks to their most recent announcement. They've added more finishings one can select for stainless steel prints. In addition to the existing Gold Plate Matte finish, you can now choose from:

 

• Gold Plated Glossy (on the left above)
• Antique Bronze Glossy (third from the left)
• Antique Bronze Matte (on the right)

 

All we need now is for Shapeways to prepare a Silver Glossy finish and we can print out our own complete set of Olympic Medals!

 

Via Shapeways

Controversy Over Shapeways Gold Plating Formula?

A while back the Shapeways 3D Print service toyed with Gold Plating on stainless steel printed models. Evidently this trial was successful, as they have now announced a new, permanently available material: Gold Plated Stainless Steel. 

 

This sounds great, as we previously postulated that a ton (well, maybe not an *actual* ton, but lots anyway) of imaginative jewelry would be printed. Now aspiring 3D jewellers will have to contend with a new pricing structure for gold:

 

0cm³ < to ≤1cm³    = Min. price $20

1cm³ < to ≤  5cm³  = $11/cm³

5cm³ < to ≤ 10cm³ = $10/cm³

> 10cm³ = $9/cm³

 

That's pretty clear, no? There are several ways to price gold plating, and Shapeways had to decide on a method that is both easy to understand but provides the optimum pricing. The price should go down as more gold is used, since the gold - a fixed cost - increases, while the labor expended by a goggled gold dipper is about the same per unit. We think the scheme is reasonable, although the gold used is proportional to the model's surface area, not its volume - and some models could indeed be pathological in this respect. 

 

Some in the Shapeways community were confused by the new pricing in the announcement's comments: 

fx2: I thought one of the Shapeways goals was to have a self explaining pricing model 

Whystler: the accuracy of how it reflects the amount of work that goes into a gold model compared to a stainless model is not so clear.

 

Readers were seemingly confused by the scheme which probably should read like this:

 

• from 0cm³ < to ≤1cm³    = Min. price $20
• plus any additional 1cm³ < to ≤  5cm³ @ $11/cm³
• plus any additional 5cm³ < to ≤ 10cm³ @ $10/cm³
• plus any additional cm³ over 10cm³ @ $9/cm³

  

We're quite happy with this pricing. And also that we managed to use "Gold Dipper" in a post. 

 

Via Shapeways

Golden 3D Prints with Shapeways' Midas Touch

Shapeways is experimenting with another print material, one you've always wanted to have: Gold!

 

They've managed to develop a process where a gold-plating step is added to normal stainless steel 3D printing. The results, as you can see in the image above, are terrific. 

 

The major concern with Gold Printing, is of course the cost. Gold is a lot more expensive than ABS plastic or even stainless steel. So how did Shapeways do? Pretty well, it seems. The gold is only a thin layer and thus not a lot of volume is used during the process. 

 

Shapeways charges USD$5 as a "start up cost", with an additional USD$10 per each cubic centimetre of material after that. This combined stainless-steel + gold material charge must assume typical ratios of gold surface to overall volume. Nevertheless, it's quite a decent price, as it allows you to produce gold jewelry without breaking the bank. The pendant pictured above is priced at only USD$14.50 each, where as rings on their samples page are approximately USD$20 and a bracelet is priced at USD$40.

 

Via Shapeways