[HN Gopher] Making My Own Wedding Rings
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Making My Own Wedding Rings
Author : robenkleene
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-07-08 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (geoff.greer.fm)
(TXT) w3m dump (geoff.greer.fm)
| doctoboggan wrote:
| When I was getting married a few years ago I started down this
| path as well. However I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to
| get the quality I wanted so I ended up finding someone who would
| be able to 3d print and cast my design. There are casting houses
| out in LA that will accept a STL file and will 3d print, cast,
| and finish your ring for you. The price is very reasonable, just
| labor and a bit of a premium on top of the spot gold price.
|
| Using that experience I ended up starting a side business where I
| sell custom designed jewelry. My most popular design incorporates
| my customer's fingerprints. I build a pipeline that lets me go
| from a jpeg or other image file of the fingerprint to a fully 3d
| printable STL file (mostly using the blender python API). Because
| there are so many casting houses in LA they compete to keep the
| prices down. My completely custom rings that I have cast in small
| batches (compared to the large chains), are still very cost
| competitive with the competition.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Has anyone including you stopped to think of the security
| implications of of making a thumbprint jewelry like this?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Do you have an image? I am struggling to imagine how/where you
| squeeze in a fingerprint unless it is really scaled down or
| some kind of wrap around the band.
|
| Are the grooves deeply etched? Or coated with some kind of
| protective layer? I imagine a few years of friction would rub
| away the finer details.
| zachthewf wrote:
| We had a great experience doing this in a much less hardcore way
| through this company: https://withtheseringshandmade.com/
|
| I'd recommend to anyone who is interested but does not have the
| skills to make a ring on your own. Great weekend trip from
| Seattle too.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| How much did you end up paying?
| zachthewf wrote:
| I don't remember exactly, but somewhere in the neighborhood
| of $1,000.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > I'm reminded of the trial and error, the mistakes, the
| frustrations, the determination to keep working through problems,
| and the eventual beautiful success.
|
| > Hmm. That almost sounds like a relationship.
|
| Best bit.-
|
| Wishing them all success.-
| themadturk wrote:
| My wife's father was a gemologist and metalsmith. When we got
| married 42 years ago, he made both of our wedding rings -- lost
| wax casting, of course, since 3D printing wasn't a thing. Mine is
| a plain rose gold band, hers is antiqued gold leaves surround a
| diamond (he was an experienced gem faceter, but would not touch
| diamonds, which he'd rarely worked with, so ours came from a
| diamond dealer). He had me pour the gold for both rings. It's
| nice to have a story to go with them!
| gregschlom wrote:
| > lost wax casting, of course, since 3D printing wasn't a thing
|
| Just to nitpick, even with 3D printing these days, the process
| is still called lost wax casting. The printer prints a wax
| version of the model, and then the plaster is poured around it
| to make a mold and the wax model is melted out.
|
| The only difference is that the wax model is made by a 3d
| printer rather than by hand.
| ortusdux wrote:
| There are burnout printer filaments and resins as well, so
| I've heard it referred as 'lost plastic' casting
|
| https://helpcenter.phrozen3d.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/632528374...
| gregschlom wrote:
| This is cool but for people without access to all the tools, a
| much easier way is to just upload your design to Shapeways.com
| and let them take care of all the casting.
| (https://www.shapeways.com/materials/gold)
|
| You can also have your design done in brass first for relatively
| cheap, to validate the design.
|
| I made our wedding rings that way, as well as quite a bit of
| jewelry over the years for my spouse. (pendants, earrings,
| etc...)
| hooverd wrote:
| Unfortunately... https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/shapeways-
| files-for-bankrupt...
|
| You wouldn't guess it from their website at the moment though.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| A couple fun facts about casting metals:
|
| Many of them shrink when they solidify. For the size and
| tolerances needed for a ring you can probably ignore this detail.
| You can get what is called a low-shrink mold made for some alloys
| that helps mitigate this if you want to make your prototype to
| finished size (or you didn't know better before you takes to the
| jeweler).
|
| Patternmakers deal with this using what are called shrink rules.
| They look like regular rules, but are e.g. 5% longer. If you're
| buying an old rule, make sure you don't get one by mistake.
|
| Silver rings, worn regularly, won't need to be polished to keep
| the tarnish at bay; the contact from your skin will do quite well
| enough. Our wedding rings are also silver, and I've only polished
| mine when I haven't worn it for a while. Ours probably don't
| polish up to quite the same luster though. They're a regular
| alloy of silver for jewelry and not silver and gold.
| ggreer wrote:
| I was worried about the metal shrinking, but I only had to
| increase the size of my prints by 1.6% to get the desired ring
| size. eg: The PLA ring had an inner diameter of 16.8mm and the
| casting had a diameter of 16.5mm.
|
| Thanks for the info about the lack of tarnish. I'm glad I won't
| have to do much maintenance.
| ulysses1244 wrote:
| I am in the process of doing this as well, but I'm trying to stay
| on a tight budget.
|
| After 10 failures and different trials, this is my rough process:
| - Melt fine silver with a butane torch
|
| - Pour it into a circle mold with a metal rod in the middle
| (makeshift ring mold). I tried sand casting with a wax mold but
| couldn't keep the metal hot enough to fill the chamber.
|
| - Hammer the ring on metal ring mandrel to shape and increase the
| size. This took probably 5,000 light hits with a metal hammer,
| periodically annealing.
|
| - Use a dremel and grinding stone to further shape it
|
| - Sand and polish by hand
|
| Since I shaped it with a metal hammer, it has a really nice and
| natural hammer finish that I plan to keep.
|
| I'm considering trying to electroplate it in palladium since the
| fine silver will tarnish and scratch over time, but it'll be
| harder to fix inevitable mistakes.
| HanClinto wrote:
| Excellent post! Excellent problem-solving, and very nice result!!
|
| Taking a completely direction, my wife and I made our own wedding
| rings out of stainless steel (a low-nickel alloy suitable for
| contact with skin -- 316L, I think), and we milled them on a
| lathe in my employer's machine shop after hours. Nearly 20 years
| later, and they have held up remarkably well.
|
| If you're going to lathe a ring, make sure you do as much shaping
| and polishing before you detach it from the rest of the rod, and
| then create a mandrel that is the correct size to hold the ring
| (using friction) from the other direction. Hammer it onto the
| mandrel, do your final burr-removal and polishing, then pop it
| off the hammer.
|
| Important side note: Don't do a test-fit before taking the burr
| off, or else you'll slice the skin on your finger all the way
| 'round in a very nice ring-shaped pattern and it will be the
| absolute dickens to try and get it off. Maybe don't ask me how I
| know...
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