Pendant Cast (fail)

After having a successful print, it moved onto the next step of production which was investing and then casting. The piece was invested with the R&R investment powder (advised) and cast at normal casting temperatures for 18ct Yellow gold. The casting  was a fail as parts did not cast properly and the finish was horrible, however this was the ftx green resin and the casting that worked previously was the ftx cast resin as it was a more wax based resin. I am currently awaiting the ftx cast resin so that I can start production for Vijay Shah Jewellers as well as my own B-tech work.

Pendant Print (auto support)

After having a failed print of the pendant using manual supports,  I redid the print with the auto support function. It was a perfect print.

Importance of supports when printing

Whilst Geomagics (software for the ProJet) has an automatic support function, I've decided to play a little and see what happens when I remove some of the auto supports on my print file, below are images of the build.

 

The entire pendant did not print, only the parts that had supports printed therefore making it vital that the piece being printed has adequate supports in order for the print to work

Chanic Brake Ring

Whilst browsing GrabCAD I stumbled upon a Industrial Design student by the name of Délé. He posted a rendering of a ring that he designed. His ring was inspired by car brakes and dubs it 'the Chanic collection.'

https://grabcad.com/library/chanic-brake-ring-1 

 

Délé has offered other people part of the GrabCAD community to design their very own car brake inspired ring. I think this would be a really cool project to work on towards my B-tech.

GrabCAD

Last week, whilst my printer was being set up I was advised to have a look at a site called GrabCAD. This site contains literally everything under the sun which is able to be downloaded and printed. The problem with these downloads are that the formats are usually stl. These stl files do not allow you to work on the file like you usually would when saving on rhino. So you can literally just scale up or down and that's about it. However this is a really cool site to see the design skills of others designing using CAD.

The website for GrabCAD is https://grabcad.com/home 

First Test Print (ProJet)

I decided to do a test print literally right after the technician left the workshop. I am really pleased with the outcome as well as the speed of the printer....these 2 rings took just 100 min to print which is really fast compared to the Envisontec and the solidscape printers

Arrival of the ProJet

After a good few weeks, I have finally taken delivery of my 3D printer. I can't wait to start printing!