Spiral Cage

Yanying, I was contacted that the spiral cage I ordered to be printed in stainless steel - gold could not be printed.
Could you be so kind to regenerate a slightly larger model that complies to the metal printing guidelines, or enable a scale such that the buyer can scale up your design ?

Very elegant and appealing. Well done!
My daughter would love 2 as earings, although thinks they may be a bit too large. Is it possible you can scale it to 75% and still have it print ok?

Great model! And fantastic price!

Wonderful! I will certainly order another one to make matching earrings :)

When can we order it in metal?

Thank you very much for your long entry. (I can't believe I missed it!) I am so sorry I took so long to reply. I didn't check in here for quite some time. I am very glad you liked it. (It makes my day when I hear my designs make people happy. =D ) I didn't mark up the price by much, because I thought more people will get it if it is offered at an affordable price. I will take up your suggestion on the top version (once I am free from the evil clutches of my projects... haha) Once again, thanks again for buying my spiral cage and taking the time to leave such a long entry about it. I really appreciate it. =)

I ordered two of these as sort of 'throw-ins' on the order for a larger model (Bathsheba Grossman's Menger Sponge), they have arrived and they are absolutely delightful.

They are not nearly as fragile as they look. I mean, you certainly don't want to step on one or drop a heavy book on it, but it's not going to crumble in your hand. It will support, on its side, the weight of an ordinary paperback book without ill effect. If it falls on the floor, at a mass of a gram or two (it registers about 1 gram on my kitchen scale) it certainly won't break itself. I will be getting more of them and at some point will test one or two to destruction, but I doubt it will alter my view.

If I were shapeways and had a trade show to attend, I'd print off a couple hundred spiral cages as booth giveaways. I will be ordering at least half a dozen of them myself next time I make an order at shapeways to give away to friends, colleagues, and, frankly, anyone who recognizes how cool they and the process that produced them are. I'm a big fan of 3D printing as a means of produce affordable sculpture and do my part to promote it.

Oh, and the spiral cage is a top. Yup, grasp it by the thinner end and give it a spin over a smooth surface and it will spin like a top. It stops relatively soon, no doubt due to friction/collisions with the trapped ball and its very low mass, but is very cool. I don't know if this could be done, but it would be interesting to try out a 'top' version of spiral cage, with the thinner end of the spiral drawn up int a bit of a spindle (5mm would be enough) to get a better grip to spin) and the point at the larger end of the spiral made a bit blunter and rounder to reduce friction on the surface it's being spun on. My Mom discovered the top properties

So, bottom line, beautiful model, yanying, really marvellous and at just the right combination of delicacy and strength.

For the rest of you, if you like the image of yanying's Spiral Cage, you'll love the real thing. I'd suggest ordering several of them at a time because you'll probably want to give them away to folk who marvel at them and at 2.5USD these are an absolute bargain. I certainly can't recall ever being so delighted by something so inexpensive.

Okie, I finally got my shop's up. :P Thanks for the comments, PP. =) I tried to PM you several times, but my browser seem to be having problems with the shapeways forum. n_n;;

Like the once before me, very nice model.... pictures are also very nice on the forum.
And yes would love to buy in SWF. Why don't you put it in your shop?

Sorry, I am still testing the model. n_n;; The SWF model came in already, but it is so thin and fragile I am not sure if you guys _really_ want to spend money on it. (Pretty renders are ... pretty renders. Nothing beats photos of the real thing. :P ) I'll be posting up photos of the SWF model soon. Will be looking forward to your comments. =)

Congrats Yanying! I just wish I could buy it!! I came here to do so, but alas it is not for sale...

Huge congratulations for the win yanying, this is a truly elegant piece...

I look forward to seeing photos of the winning print

Complements on your metal rendering, very nice, same with your other entry.

Simple, elegant, beautiful. Easily my favorite admission to the Metal3DPrint contest. If the alloy used has decent resonant properties the chiming cause by the rolling ball would be interesting to hear.