Vaaish does a super secret anniversary gift...

[Vaaish]

Since I have to do some form of 3d physical object using a letter as inspiration for class an my anniversary is coming up, I decided to use this opportunity to try out printing in silver and make a necklace for my wife... pictures will come sometime in here.

[mangozac]

I find this really interesting and love the idea of doing something similar when it comes to an engagement ring one day (but that's a long way off!).

[Magnetic Duckling]

[Munkey Joe]

I made my wife a sculpture for our anniversary last year.... She has it at her office in DC but I will try to scoot out there and grab some pictures of it. Its the "two people forming an Heart" sculpture I used for Inspiration.....and basically cloned...

Anyway, I think this is a fantastic idea, and VERY cool.

[Vaaish]

After some sketching I've come up with this as a rough idea. It follows several of the themes I pulled into the engagement ring and wedding bands working with leaves, grass, and other natural stuctures. Hopefully I can get started building this and get it finished this Saturday.

[Munkey Joe]

Very Classy..... Munkey Likie.....

[Vaaish]

well things are going fairly well today. I've got all the basic shapes in place and the curves adjusted so they flow nicely from different angles. This leaves the lattice work to fill out the crossbar of the T an add hanging loops.

[Vaaish]

After much work today I think I'm in the home stretch with this project. Of course, the home stretch is the tricky part. I need to apply all of the modifiers and then double check the the size of the vines. I've got them touching here and there so they shouldn't need to be as thick but since the cost will be pretty high, I'd prefer not to have any mistakes so I'll be double checking and if necessary thicken the vines and other aspects of the piece before uploading it and seeing if Shapeways accepts the model.

The final size is a bout 4.25cm tall. That makes each of those vines about 1mm thick which is about .2mm larger than the min recommended diameter. If all goes well I can send this off for printing in the next couple of days.

[mangozac]

Being such a personal project it's really not my place to comment on the design. But it does indeed look very intricate and beautiful. Is it actually intended as the letter "T" or is that purely just the shape?

So with the silver printing do they actually print in wax and then do investment casting?

[Fleafa]

[Vaaish]

The letter T is actually intended. The project fro class that was part of the reason for doing this was to create a 3-d physical letter. Others have made things like ampersand throw pillows or furniture in the shape of letters and the letter T just happens to be the first letter of my wife's name too

I'm a bit concerned about the details, but the specifications are that wires shouldn't be under .8mm in diameter and everything I've got on here should be around 1mm at the smallest. Any other details can be .3mm in size so I'm not too concerned with it printing I've also built it so that the vines touch at various points which increases the diameters and strengthens things quite a bit.

[Vaaish]

another slight update, I made a test upload to shapeways and it loaded up fine so pending the thickness checks tomorrow it should be good to order. Looks like the silver version will weigh in at 46 USD which is quite a bit better than I'd hoped.

[mangozac]

Only $46 for a copy in silver? Wow that's really cheap!

[horizon]

Nice Vaaish, nice.

[Vaaish]

Update time! the pendant came in the mail today and I'm happy to report there was nothing broken or miscast and it looks about exactly as I'd hoped it would. I decided to go with the rougher finish rather than polished to match with the rougher texture of the leather cord that will hold it in place. Still trying to get something, but that part should be finished tomorrow night.

I know, you want pics ok: