While happily photographing the frosted details prints of my models today, I realized to my horror that the yellow problem has not been fully resolved. I didn't notice it until I had my earring mirror image prints arranged right next to each other. It didn't happen with all of them, just some. You may recall that the first time I did a frosted detail print run, that all of them save for one came out bright yellow (I posted this in the "It arrived" forum.) Shapeways then agreed it was a product failure and reprinted. Here are some of the 'reprints.' My problem children: Two that turned out just fine: There were at least 3 others that turned out like the one on the left in the top photo. I always liked the idea of being able to print sea organisms in this translucent type of plastic, but it seems that not all of the glitches have been worked out in the production. Maybe it had something to do with the chaos of Shapeways opening their new factory in Eindhoven, who knows. I think I have no choice, however, but to take this material out of my shop. The risk of a product failure arriving in the hands of a customer is too great. Kimberly
One thing you could do to insure that they at least look the same for earrings is to put them in a cage. Also, design the cage so that it is a container with a printed in situ hinge and a latch so that the customer can easily open it. The cage could be some fancy looking design that compliments the overall design rather than a plain old square lattice mesh. Putting them in a cage would force them to be printed and cleaned together so they would come out looking the same. One thing though about frosted detail is it is very fragile. If you drop it on a hard floor from shoulder height it will most likely break. I agree though, it does have a nice sea creature feel about it.
I dunno, UniverseBecoming...the cage, hinge, latch idea seems like a lot of extra work, especially since, from a technical standpoint, the yellow effect has not been explained and there's no assurance that a cage would fix it. I guess I need to send Shapeways service an email directly so they at least know there's still a problem. I still feel the risk is too great to put it in my shop. I did try dropping one of the Ascilla earrings in FD from a height of about 6 feet onto a cement floor, and it didn't break. So at least there's that. Kimberly
All it would do is cause your earring sets to be the same color. Since nobody replied to your thread in 5 days I thought I'd make the suggestion. Here's what happened to my flaming skull ring when I dropped it from 3 feet.
It was just for seeing the design in real life before casting. It's a lot heavier than your earrings though as the skull for this version is solid. Also, this was a few years ago, so they may have improved the material strength by now.