Hello Shapeways Forum, my brother and me have created a design for a ring, but I am not quite sure how it will come out. I already did the ring in white detail with only 1mm thickness and I had absolutely no visible relief and I don't want to spend another 25$ for a test print so I'm asking here. 1.) The ring now has a wallthickness of 2mm but I'm not sure how that will print or if it isn't even possible to. So how thick should a stainless steel or bronze ring be to get decent results? 2.) There was no relief visible on the white detail and it has min. detail of 0.2mm, but stainless steel has a min. detail of 1mm. How high should the relief be to be even visible and how high to get decent results? I am aware that the level of detail can never be as high as it is in the render but still I hope I can get some good results with your help. Merry christmas to all greetings Malacath PS: If it is of any importance, I'm using Blender 3D as you may have seen on the screenshot. The relief is done with a diplace modifier and a UV-mapped texture so I can edit it very fast.
A ring with a 2mm walI should print just fine. I'd go at least .5mm for all the raised /embossed details. This would allow enough material to grind /sand polish the top surfaces and will create a nice contrast with the background.
Thanks a lot GlenG but I have some new questions arising now: 1) You said that 2mm ar just fine, but on the parts that are lowered the thickness will be below 2mm, will that affect printabilaty? (see the "belt " around the ring) 2) 0.5 mm should be the embossed detail is what you said, will that be also ok if there is just a difference in height of 0.5 mm between the raised and the lowered parts? (See the image: The elephant head is on the "belt" that is lowered) 3) It looks quite aweful with such high a displacement. Wil it look like this when printed or will the detail bve washed out a bit? greetings Hanno
I'm sorry to report that this is no longer the case. Shapeways changed their steel policy and they now insist on 3mm thickness. (I had ton of orders canceled as a results)
My Check Rope Ring printed ok with 1 to 2 mm thickness (ordered end Nov, received mid Dec), the checked detail is raised 0.5mm, and the rope raised 0.75mm off of a 1mm band.. Based upon the models I've had rejected, the wall thickness issue is a manual check and the rejection depends upon who checks it... models with a bounding box dimension of less than 2.5mm are automatically rejected by software.
Hanno, I meant to have all the embossed areas at the same depth. Somewhere between .25 and .5mm deep. The reason I suggest the deeper emboss is because this "tolerance" would allow you to grind or machine the top surface down a little bit. This post printing operation tends sharpen any embossed detail. If doing this sort of operation on your own is out of the question then use the lower tolerance and hope for the best.