Testing Before printing in Ag

Hi everyone, I just started making some model, and would like to make several silver charms(some of which have small details), my problem is I would like to have an idea of the final result of the product before spending all the money on printing it in silver. What are the best materials I could use in order to have a general idea of the final result?. I was thinking to try stainless steel i order to see how it come out in metal, even though I know I will probably get worst detail, and strong and flexible (which looks like it has the same detail properties as silver). The strong and flexible plastic though is printed using a different technology with respect to Ag.
Has anyone had past experiences and can tell me if there is a cheaper material on which to test my models?
Thank you very much

As far as WSF being a different process than silver. Silver is the only material we offer that is printed in wax then lost wax cast. Stainless is *usually* good for knowing something is printable in silver, because it's requirements are some of the most strict. I've used white detail in the past for a sample, but it allows more detail in it's rules than silver.

thanks for your answer, I saw that WFS is less restrictive, but stainless steel seems so much more restrictive I was afraid of getting an awful result and giving up. Nonetheless I'll probably just print both considering the low cost of WFS

The nearest in quality and print restrictions is Frosted Detail.

A model that conforms to the rules for Silver, but breaks most for steel may be printable in steel but fail in silver, this mainly depends on the model's geometry and what is possible with traditional casting methods.

Paul

Yeah but frosted detail plastic has a much higher engraving and embossing detail than silver, so I might end up having a good printed product, while printing it in silver might give me a product with no details right? So I wouldn't know what the final result would be

Silver isn't printed, the wax master is printed - the wax printing has a much finer resolution than WSF, Steel or Frosted Detail, however the end result is none of them because the wax is then invested and cast in silver which is where the 'design guidelines' come into play. The only realy way to know for sure how a Silver 'print' will end up and be sustainable is to order the thing in silver and ask Shapeways Customer Services all along the way if there are any issues with the print - otherwise the first you might find of any issues is if the model becomes popular and the production team flake.

Paul

Thank you very much for the explanation, I guess the best thing then is to print them, see if the design is good and if so have them in silver and hope for the best