Gold Rings and Things

Moon Medallion in gold, and in steel, for comparison:

I really love the gold version, even though the steel one is more moon-colored. Both are beautiful. (BTW, don't try sanding a steel one. Is doesn't look as cool.)

Gold Legion Flight Rings:

The plan for these is to sand the logo smooth on one, and see if the revealed steel surface looks good in combination with the surrounding gold. And I might drop some black paint into the recesses, following the glazing tutorial. I might also wand-plate the exposed logo with gold. Right now, the textured surface of the logo just isn't working for me. But I didn't expect it to. I got these in order to experiment.

The One Ring in gold:

This one didn't turn out great. The elvish script isn't very clear. I never ordered this in plain steel, so I don't know if it's a problem with resolution in steel, or the gold layer, or what.

First i have to say that the level of smoothness on "The one Ring" SS/Gold model is awesome! , thanks to a special 0.001mm smoothing process i applied to almost all my models.
- No "stairs" effect.

The sad news is.. you beat me to it , i'm still waiting for my own gold plated "The one ring" to arrive .....



I distinctly recall gold plating is only few microns in depth.. so how could the Elvish writings disappear... ?

Here is a "thought".. did you try pick the fonts with a needle? it might work ... :confused

Love the moon medallion

Why does everything look familiar to what I had in my head now...

PS : That kind of reminds of me the... erm... "Mysterious Cities of Gold" (?) ... thing...

The moon medallions are gorgeous ! I should definitely get some as presents.

Looks like the "one ring" received a very deep and good polishing !

Although I have no idea what this 0.001 mm technique is, judging from the 3d preview the model is actually quite facetted/low-poly ?
I see nothing wihich should prevent stairstepping, other then the post processing polshing ?

Also, the letters seem awfully thin, this could lead to stuck powder left during the green phase, which probably fused during the oven cycle.
Making the letters less pronounced. Combined with a smooth polishing this seems to have leveled it out almost completely.

I doubt poking at it now would have much effect, although you might be able to re-engrave it a little.

Probably should make the letters thicker and add a chamfer/tapering, so the powder can get out more easily.

If you make them even thicker, you could add a red baking dye/paint in the crevices, like in the blog post.

thanks to a special 0.001mm smoothing process i applied to almost all my models.
- No "stairs" effect.

Hi Dizingof, how can I do this as well? I use Rhino to create the models.
Also, I got my gold plated SS ring but the gold doesnt look so "goldie" - do you know if its possible to replate it using regular plating companies (jewelry plating companies)
Thanks, Ruti

When TommySaysSoWhat ordered "The one ring" it was with the 'refine & smooth' process i talked about..
Here is the before & after:





When i ordered it for my self i re-uploaded the stl file, this time with my logo in the inner ring... as you can see at "The One Ring" page... without applying the process. (probably forgot)

Anyway, my ring should arrive in 2-3 days and we'll see if TommySaysSoWhat's ring was deeply hand-polished or if it was my smoothing process..



Or.. perhaps shapeways staff can comment if it was hand-polished or not... it's important to understand the process for future prints.

Well i don't work with Rhino... see if you have some sort of "Refine & smooth" button, then apply it either for the whole model or on selective parts (as the smoothing results may vary)

I have no clue about re-plating companies.. you could go to a jewelry store and have it done there.

could you post pics of your none "goldie" ring?

Ah, my misunderstanding
However the "Stairstepping"/roughness (a printing artifact) and the polygon smoothness are not that correlated I think.

I would at least advice anyone to at least check the way Meshlab or Shapeways renders the model after applying smoothing operators.
Or use something like "facets/flat" view in your native application.

Because some smoothing operations also utilize a preview/render-time/visual only optimization.

Cheers,

Stijn

I can't really tell whether the script on The One Ring has been polished away or whether it's something else.

It is quite smooth. You can just barely see some facetting if you look carefully with the light shining just so.

However, the Legion Flight Rings are even smoother around their backsides.

And it wasn't until I looked at the photo of the Moon Medallions that I noticed that the gold one is noticeably smaller than the "just steel" one. The model had been converted to a co-creator version in between my orders, so the model itself may have been made smaller. Still gorgeous, no matter what the exact size.

Silly humans! Don't you know that you can't see the inscription on the "one ring" unless you throw it into the fire? That's why you are having problems with seeing it... Sheesh...

-Whystler

:laughing: :laughing:

:laughing:

And hey Whystler ! It's been a while ! Up to much ?

Sanded the front of one of the gold Legion rings. As expected, it didn't take much to remove the gold. I still have some sanding to do, but I've done enough to see that I like the contrast between the gold and the steel, although I still intend to plate the smoothed logo and put something black into the logo recesses.


I also forgot to include a photo of this wee spaceman. The detail is remarkable. You can't see it in the photo, but he has tiny separate fingers. The soles of his feet aren't square, so he can't stand on his own. A couple minutes with some sandpaper should fix that.