RAW52 #25 & #29 Wavy Ring

I recently got a few of my latest RAW submissions printed in different materials. I send this wavy ring design off to Ponoko and Shapeways to test service and printing quality.

Wave ring printed in Stainless Steel

I have to say I am way more impressed by Shapeways. Their material choices are greater and the prints came out cleaner. Their Frosted Ultra Detail prints are impressively detailed with only very fine printing lines. I still have to try casting one of those in silver to see how they burn out in the lost wax process.

3D prints of RAW25/52 model in Stainless Steel, Black Detail and White Detail plastic and Frosted Ultra Detail. Printed by Shapeways.

 The stainless steel rings are always great with an interesting texture. It took 2 weeks to get models delivered from Ponoko and 3 weeks from Shapeways. Ponoko has trouble with printing lot's of my designs as they seem to small for them. Not an issue with Shapeways, especially the ultra detail material allows very thin parts in the model. Uploading models and organizing it for printing is easier on Shapeways.  So I guess I stay with Shapeways.

A couple shots of the stainless steel print.

The model was done using T-splines for Rhino 4. The smooth wave was laid out flat and then bend into a ring shape.  I also tried lofting curves and 2 rail sweeps directly in Rhino without t-splines but it got some wonky areas. The edges are sharper with this approach seen in the images below.

Rhino4 render image

I did start playing with a trial version of Brazil for Rhino to render some designs more realistically looking. I am still a bit confused with all those settings that need to get adjusted to get an image. Easy to spend hours on this.

Rendering in Brazil with gold material settings