polished Stainless Steel

I was wondering if Shapeways has considered offering polished Stainless Steel as an option.

I believe it is $10 more to have a silver model polished. I would be more than willing to pay the same amount to get back a SS piece that has had a good amount of the printing artifacts buffed out and polished to a shine.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Lincoln

++1

I recall they used to offer polished stainless, but I do not recall the reason for it being dropped. There was some confusion over one of my orders after the change, as the surface finish was much different than the order before.

Unfortunately, I did not save the email from customer service explaining why the polishing step was dropped.

Lincoln,
Check the new SW guidlines for polished SS. This is a very good overview of the process. Results will vary with the part geometry. If you want better results you will have to DIY. Hand finishing is extremely labor intensive on this material. Flat fees would be impossible because so much depends on the geometry of any given part. It would be a logistical nightmare to manage through an online venue

-G

OK. Thanks Glen.

I assumed that the polished silver process could be used on the stainless steel.

Is the silver not hand finished?

Lincoln

silver is a lot softer then steel. this would be my guess why.

The SS and the Sterling are produced by different service providers. I only know specifics of the SS. And yes, Silver is a LOT softer than the SS and a whole lot easier to polish.

-G

They make the silver pieces via printing (or perhaps milling?) a wax model, then using the lost-wax casting method. The texture on the raw cast silver is MUCH finer than that of a printed steel piece because of the super fine texture of the investment plaster used for casting. That's one reason why cast silver, or other precious metal (or even cast bronze/brass) is way easier to get a mirror shine.

Of course the other reason is that polishing steel of any sort involves much more time and labor. From the raw printed look of the stainless steel, it would be a nightmare to polish by hand, though a thorough set of tumbling stages would help a bunch.

Stainless steel can also be cast, but cutting the darn sprues off is almost as tough as the polishing! So we can only hope they perfect the stainless steel printing, and can do it without the infusion of bronze (preferably in a 316 alloy pleeeeease !)

From Nathan Maurer
www.kissoflight.com

3 years ago, when this thread was last posted on, silver was not available yet

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