Just wanted to give something back to the Form2 community =)
I am a jewelry designer who recently got into the business and now is experimenting with the Form 2 in printing my own designs and casting them with a professional casting house.
I am also a micro pave diamond setter, so many of my designs are aimed at putting very small diamonds in the surface at a later stage.
Bought a printer this March and started prototyping using the Clear resin.
We then loaded a cartridge of Castable and just send our first batch of 8 models to a casting house to be casted in silver before moving onto gold.
Below you see my layout for the this print.
I struggled a lot with the placement of the support beams.
Somehow the program almost always wants to position my rings upside down.
This is not how I hoped to be printing when I bought the printer.
So several times I āforceā the rings in an upright position or at a small angle.
All at 0.0025 for the highest detail.
Below you see a small failure in the top bezels of this ring. I know it is a very small and detailed ring but it is designed for micro pave setting of 1.5mm diamonds. I will work this out by repairing this using a laser welder when the model is casted.
This image is more zoomed in and shows that the printer was unable to create the bottoms of the top bezels. This was probably due to the fact that I did not place supports there.
Does anyone of you guys have a better suggestion to print this ring? At a different angle? More or less supports?
Below you see a picture of a signet ring that I made supports for in my 3D design program (Gemvision Matrix). It positions the ring upright on the printing platform and I create a very small base. Thereby making it a little bit more difficult to remove it from the platform but saving huge on printing liquid. Looking at the print you can see that this also worked fine.
At this moment all the models displayed and some extra are at a casting house.
Iāve cured some models 8 hours and others 2.5hours. So I can determine the differences in the results. Wish me luck =)
My learnings so far are:
Make sure you place the model at the best angle but do not let the software trick you
For āover-hangingā parts always insert a support.
Sometimes an easy support in the middle does the trick
My wishes are:
Make it possible to vary with layer thickens
Communicate openly about other resins that are castable and that you guys suggest
Provide a best practice in placing supports for jewelry printing
Make the resin re-usable. So that the supports and the base platform can be āmeltedā again and re-used for further printing.
Assuming the ring was oriented near-vertically (as appears to be the case) then I donāt think the bottoms of the bezels were supported adequately. Iād be tempted to add in a grid of very fine (0.6mm or so) support struts prior to generating the preform supports; nothing more than looping from base to base and running Pipe on it is what I was thinking. Slightly more cleanup work post-casting but nothing too problematic. The other thought is rather than lasering post casting, have you considered putting a drop of resin onto the failed areas and curing it with a near-UV laser pointer?
At first glance I thought your newer supports were generated with RhinoGold, but with the recent incorporation of TDM it may be there wonāt be much difference before longā¦
Thanks for your suggestion.
I think that creating a thin pipe could make the difference since that would fix the issue at hand =).
I am using Gemvision Matrix, great program and very user friendly.
What kind of laser pointer would you suggest?
The microscopic laser I ment is used for welding gold or silver.
I use Rhino - as you know, Matrix is built on top of it. Used to use RG, but itās too buggy to rely on and I donāt feel like paying again for the newer versions (and all-new bugs).
Iāve got a cheap (and probably quite dangerous) near-UV laser pointer from EBay - never trust the things as eye safe and handle accordingly. 405nm, 1mW IIRC.
I also have a Laserstar welder - itās proven to be quite useful for a number of things.
Wow, another setter with a Form 2. I am also new to 3D printing, work with Matrix and have also just got my Form 2. We are experimenting with our first prints at the moment and having similar problems.
Maybe we can all keep each other updated, motivated and all get the most out of our printerā¦
I will post some prints soon!
So to all the setters, designers, Matrix uses and other 3D Jewellers out thereā¦
Iām not new to 3D printing, but Iām new to SLA printers. I have a Form 1+ and Iām just starting to play with it. I plan to use it mostly to prototype jewelry.
Can I ask what is the price range of Gemvision Matrix? Iāve heard many things (mostly very favorable) about that software.
You can usually get better results if you orient and place the supports yourself, you have to take into account where the details are and what orientation will require the fewest supports, the process is not going to be automatic enough.
As far as melting resin down, Iām betting thatās not possible due to the chemical change that happens when it cures.
Some of us use laser welders to effect partial repairs, fill in porosity and the likes on castings when they come back in (as metal objects). Mine has presets for porosity for the usual jewellery metals.
I doubt I could turn mine down low enough to do anything less than blow holes through resin prints.
I am a Jewellery Caster, expectantly and eagerly awaiting my Form 2. My casting does not have porosity - thats 40 years of experience in knowing where to put the sprues, what temperature to set the melt and flasks at - or when to ring up the Jeweller and say āSeriously? you want me to cast THIS!!!ā well it wonāt - so hereās what you need to do to modify your design to make it, lost wax casting, friendly
Enjoying this thread canāt wait for my machine to arrive.
Iāve seen some truly dreadful porosity from some large casters who ought to know betterā¦ Sprueing I try not to 2nd guess, design for manufacture is something I always try to consider. Not trying to cast fine wires on ballerina clusters, for exampleā¦!
Hi CAD Jewelers on this forum, I am joining you as a fellow CAD Jeweler and Form user , mine is in the postā¦I will hopefully unpack and start printing later this week. I use Rhino and will also be pushing out micro pave items. So I look forward to adding my 2 cents worth!
Rhino vs Matrix
Rhino is way more affordable but has less bells and whistles. I have been using Rhino (no plug-ins) for 8+ years to design jewelry, I admit Matrix is absolutely mind blowing! but if you cant afford it donāt worry, work your way up!
The rendering attached was done on a friends Martix but the entire model was done in Rhino.
Thereās some differences in the way the environment is set up IIRC and Matrix also supplies materials definitions which are better than the usual OTS options - although for quick & dirty renders VRay Express is not bad. Rubbish diamond material though
Thank you again! Now this is showing how new I am to this softwareā¦ I promise these are my last questions! Iām looking at a table comparing Rhino for Mac to the Windows version. I guess my questions are
Can I design jewelry with the version for mac as it is possible with the version for Windows, considering that the plugins for the Mac version are still limited, and
Is there a Rhino Gold for Mac as well or is enough to have just Rhino. Again, my main interest is jewelry design.
