3D printing earrings and pins

@FabMeJewelry: Brilliant thinking Love the way you worked your way around the technical limitations But for customers to order directly from the Shapeways webshop we still need Shapeways to allow multiple objects in metals in general.

Cheers, Mike

Additionally, do regular earnuts fit your posts, since the "normal" post diameter is .85mm?

Thanks @Inspired_by_Nature and @seriaforma !

@lensman The earnuts we've used had a hole of 1,5mm so perfect fit, i think we got them from i-beads.com way too expensive but anyway :

@Inspired_By_Architecture We've seen some gold prints from Nervous systems with interlocking parts printed by another service, that would be awesome if possible with Shapeways metals !

Great info on the Shapeways specs, guys! Just wanted to say that in some rare cases (like on the picture below) the thickness of the pin can get up to 1.2 -1.3 and even more.
Nice to meet all the goldsmiths and jewelry designers out here.

Thx for the info. Will use then 1 mm.

Do you have other type of earrings like one piece ones ? Wondering the variation on the ear loops like this ones https://www.etsy.com/listing/203687174/geometric-silver-pend ant-textured?ref=pr_shop they look to my eyes 1.2 mm or more.

Err just found this ones https://www.shapeways.com/model/1517163/i-lens-escher.html?m aterialId=83 looks like they can print some like this. Going to go to 1.2 mm thickness a similar type.

Ears are elastic!

Numarul7 Hi

These specific earrings clasp has a square like form of the pin section. When working in stud earrings or dangling earrings it is best to work with wire like pin. The thickest wire I tried in standard earrings was 1.3 mm and was convenient to most of the customers ( it basically depends on the scale of the earring itself, the bigger and heavier the piece, the thicker the wire). A thing to remember: when you use brass, silver or gold, it goes through fine polishing process which can reduce the final wire diam up to 0.1-0.2 mm from the original thickness.
So I think for an earring with distentions less then 2 cm in length it is better not to make more than 1 mm thickness. With the pieces of 2 cm length and more a wire can get up to 1.1mm. With large pieces like 5 cm and longer it can be 1.2mm and even more.

Just bumping this up to show the double standards that exist when it comes to spruing...

I recently had this model rejected http://shpws.me/w8Yz (two paracord skull beads attached at back of skull by a thick sprue) because:
"Your model has been rejected because there are 2 models connected with a sprue. We have drafted a set of design guidelines and introduced material pricing based on what we do and to truly reflect the cost. We do not allow multiple shells in Brass and we feel that adding a sprue is just a workaround."

So, one designer can get around the "no moving parts" rule by adding a thin c shaped sprue, but my model gets rejected because I'm being a bad boy by making two beads into one? - And that was a thick sprue essentially making the model into one object.

ANOTHER reason I sprued them together is I wanted to use the beads at opposite ends of a corded design and wanted the beads to go in the same printing and casting process together so as to maintain consistency in production and finish. I DON'T want print lines going in opposite directions of the beads - Just like the designers of earrings and cufflinks want the same thing and are allowed to put to mirror imaged models in one file.

Not very fair.

Maybe I'll just separate them and call them earrings!

This rejection makes no sense whatsoever! Whoever wrote this is a complete moron! HAHAHA! Either that or it's a hacker trying to sabotage Shapeways by sending out fake rejection notices! HAHAHA!

Well, to be fair, this was the reply to my questioning of the original rejection which made no sense. It was a more honest answer, but all the more annoying.

Even so, let's analyze this. "Your model has been rejected because there are 2 models connected with a sprue. We have drafted a set of design guidelines and introduced material pricing based on what we do and to truly reflect the cost. We do not allow multiple shells in Brass and we feel that adding a sprue is just a workaround."

"Your model has been rejected because there are 2 models connected with a sprue." There is no way to know if that is a sprue or a design element. However, it doesn't matter because this is perfectly acceptable with a sprue!

"We have drafted a set of design guidelines and introduced material pricing based on what we do and to truly reflect the cost." This person has not memorized the design guidelines because if they had them correctly in mind they would have never thought that there was a violation in the model.

"We do not allow multiple shells in Brass and we feel that adding a sprue is just a workaround." They have a compound error here since it has been the case for years that designers are allowed to use multiple shells. Quote from the design guidelines, "Multiple parts per model file? No, except single pairs of mirrored or identical parts such as earrings and cufflinks." Also, it has been the case for years that we are allowed to use sprues in any way we please as long as the metal can flow freely to fill the whole casting.

What I see happening here is the employee simply doesn't know how Shapeways has been operating for years now and needs to study up on the various design guidelines before making more errant rejections and causing havoc.

IF!! If that even is an employee of Shapeways. People tend to be naive when it comes to the ways hackers can cause manipulations of websites and email without ever being detected.

Agree with everything you noted, which is why I was so annoyed. I have sent another response to their email and will await the decision.

Gosh... must get myself a bigger bucket of popcorn.

I hope this gets resolved for you lensman

Haha - I charge movie theater prices for popcorn!


Update from Customer Service: "I have received a feedback regarding your model: We won't accept models that are sprued together like this. Customer should order them separately, producing sprued models is problematic and not ideal for us."


So, there you have it. No sprues on metal prints. It's official.

I have been given the option to separate the models and send the order number to Service so that the order can be put through, however, this is not an ideal solution since customers obviously wouldn't have that option.

There is something wrong and someone needs to fix it.

Well, it seems - fingers crossed - that I have the issue resolved and will be allowed to upload the two items in one file with no sprue. What will happen with other's similar uploads, I'm not sure.

I would get a supervisor involved since there is something very wrong here. Does anyone know who manages the printability evaluation team? The only "manager" I know how to contact other than the community managers is Pete, the co-founder of Shapeways.

I have numerous designs in the works and I always start them out on Shapeways when I finish them. Currently, I've been working on a cell phone case that I have at least 200 hours invested in it's creation. If I submit the finished design and I get a rejection that IS NOT listed in the guidelines I'm going to be highly perturbed and I'm going to cause waves. You can bet your bullets on that!