{"id":19882,"date":"2015-02-13T18:42:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T18:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/?p=19882"},"modified":"2022-10-06T18:12:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T22:12:53","slug":"love-in-3d-from-wedding-contest-winners-to-newlyweds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shapeways.com\/blog\/love-in-3d-from-wedding-contest-winners-to-newlyweds","title":{"rendered":"Love in 3D: From Wedding Contest Winners to Newlyweds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just in time for Valentine’s Day we caught up with Bastiaan and Alicia Ekeler<\/a>, the winners of our Love in 3D wedding contest<\/a> from earlier this year. They 3D printed their wedding bands and gifts for the wedding party and we wanted to catch up with them to hear about their special day and what they have been making since!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"3D<\/a><\/p>\n

How did you design your 3D printed wedding rings? What inspired you to put your finger prints on the inside of the bands?<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>I designed the rings using Photoshop and Rhinoceros 3D. I have a background in industrial design so I am very familiar with these software packages. Rhino has been my favorite 3D modeling tool for a long time and was the perfect candidate for this project. The rings started with an ink pad, an 8 1\/2 x 11 piece of paper, a lot of fingerprints and a scanner. The scanned image was prepared in Photoshop and converted into a 3D surface in Rhino. I modelled the rest of the ring around the fingerprint relief and exported the whole thing to STL. There was a lot of experimentation to get all the variables right but the whole process worked pretty well.<\/p>\n

The idea of using fingerprints stems from the inherent capability for 3D printing to customize any product. Even without having won the contest, it was clear to me that our wedding rings would have to be unique and personal. No off-the-shelf design would do. Fingerprints seemed pretty unique and personal and the finger has an innate connection with the ring to begin with. They were an ideal match to be brought to life using additive manufacturing. So, the idea was born to have my left ring finger\u2019s print embedded in my wife\u2019s ring and vice-versa.<\/p>\n

You might be interested to know that we have actually decided to start offering custom designed rings on Shapeways! We like ours so much that we feel we should share the design with the world and opened out first Shapeways store<\/a>.
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