Jack Purcell: Project 2 3D Printing

Ghosted Image

Layered Image

Concept: I wanted 3D print something that would represent me. I was originally going to try to create a chess piece, but then I thought I should make a piece of jewelry instead as I could better customize it to represent me. Per Professor Scott's suggestion I watched P.J. Chen's tutorials for making jewelry with Rhino. She had a tutorial for making a signet ring which appealed to me, and I wanted to create a signet ring with my logo on it.

 

Process: I followed P.J. Chen's tutorial for making a signet ring but I improvised on a lot of it rather than using a curves network I lofted a series of hexagons. I however found her use of the boolean and alignment tools very useful. I also imported the logo which i made in Illustrator into Rhino. When I was finished with the object I did a test print and found that the orientation that It had to be printed at reduced the detail so I went back into Rhino and sliced the object in half adding pins to connect the two halves so each part could later be joined and aligned properly. I then printed the separate parts in an orientation that allowed for maximum detail eventually gluing it all together. To remove the serial signature of FDM 3D printing I sprayed the ring with several coats of sandable filler primer, and sanded the ring to a uniform smoothness. I left the ring without a final coat, as I would one day like to create a mold from the ring and cast more out of different materials and it wouldn't need another coat if it was just going to be a master copy.

Ring Components

Ring Glued Together

Ring Filled and Sanded

Ring Filled and Sanded 2

Materials: I chose MatterHackers Lilac ProPLA to print this model with as it has more dimensional accuracy and isn't as subject to warping during printing as ABS or regular PLA. I also chose the Lilac color as I thought it would contrast with the primer showing which areas have been filled and which are the ProPLA material. While I would have preferred using an SLA print with high resolution resin the Dallas Makerspace's FormLab 2 printer was broken, but the inexpensive cost of FDM printing ProPLA allowed me to test multiple iterations.