Original subtitles

welcome back to my jewelry course so

today in lesson five we're going to

discuss a few things about 3D printing

of jewelry models I'm not going to go

into great deal on it I'm going to get

just started and explain a few things

but that's pretty much what we're going

to cover today in lesson five so let's

get

started in this lesson we're going to be

talking about 3D printing for the

jewelry industry now there's a lot of

considerations to think about when you

model something like this in blender how

are we going to print it there are some

issues with this model but I'm not going

to go into too much detail this was a

sample piece I was doing for a

customer um it came out pretty good

customer is very happy with it but we're

going to make some subtle changes to

this down the road let's talk about some

of the considerations when we're

thinking about blender modeling of

jewelry and how to 3D print it if you

don't have a 3D printer now and you're

considering buying one here's some

considerations to think about when

getting into resin Printing and cons

thinking about the 3D printed jewelry

industry and getting ready for casting

I'm going to start off with bed size or

build plate size and this refers to the

number of items that you want to print

how many models you want to do at the

same time now I do a lot of oneoff

custom work so I typically will print um

maybe four five or six different models

depending on what they are and an

average about 40 millimeters each is

what I have to consider the sizing of on

my bill plate so I typically don't use a

large format resin printer however I

will put some links below there'll be

affiliate links if you want to get a

printer um I I'll link those on Amazon

so you can see which ones I recommend

I'm going to pull up that list now so

you can see basically some of the 3D

resin printers that are available now I

consider a smaller one uh like a 6.6 in

maybe even going to a 7 in but I think

that's pushing it those are good for a

small format printing where you're not

doing like 100 rings at the same time

time and you're not doing production

work this would be more for the one-off

guy who's doing you know a lot of

one-off items per week if you do a lot

of production work you might want to

consider a bigger printer however again

that falls into some other categories

but the one I use I'm currently using a

Mars 2 Pro they're up to a Mars 5 Pro

right now I'm I'm not ready to I don't

typically buy the latest and greatest

when it comes out I like to wait and see

what issues they have um the Mars for

has been a decent printer and you can

see for the price point for under $200

you're getting into resin printing you

can get a printer and some resin and

start practicing on your computer PC

lenux Mac whatever um right away and

it's it's easy to do if you're going to

do more production work then we can get

into the you know the 10in and 13inch

printers from like creality eligo

there's the eligo Saturn I I'm partial

to eligo printers they have decent

support um but once you get into that 9

10 11 133 inch printer here's something

to think about you're going to be

dumping a lot more resin into the tray

and that resin is going to be harder to

clean up so if you're working out of

your house start with something small

get used to it and then if you start

getting busy enough where you're doing

production work then move on to a larger

printer again I'll put links to these

they're affiliate links so I do make a

little commission from Amazon it's like

a quarter whenever you buy something so

uh I'll put links to that and some resin

that you can get to now let's go back to

my list here for

resins again if you're just getting into

this business or you're just learning

how to do jewelry design you're going to

be doing it for 3D printing if you're

not working with 3D printers this prob

this lesson is probably not for you but

if you are going to start 3D printing

your jewelry models then I suggest going

with ELO gray resin as a sample resin if

you're going to be producing castable

versions of your models and giving those

to a Caster or casting them yourself

then the only resin that I'm currently

recommending is

bluecast uh X1 it's it's a really good

resin um I have a friend who uses it and

he prints with it all the time um he's

had some issues recently he got I think

he got a bad batch a bad bottle of resin

but for the most part bluecast is just a

wonderful resin there's probably some of

you that are going to say hey this

resin's better that resin's better we do

a lot of cast casting a lot of printing

uh and I got to tell you just bluecast

prints well it casts well it doesn't

give you a lot of issues we'll cover

some of the settings that you need to do

for that but if you're going to do

samples for your clients for instance I

work with a lot of jewelry stores um I

do a lot of wholesale design work for

them and I like to bring them 3D models

even my own customers like I'll I'll

give them a sample that they can put in

their hand because aligo gray resin is

like $25 or cheaper a bottle as opposed

to for the same siiz bottle you're going

to get you're going to spend a little

over $300 for the bluecast it behooves

you to use the gray cheaper resins to

print your sample pieces that way you're

not wasting castable resins on pieces

that you're not going to cast and just

get thrown in a

box so think of that um the resins

available I'll I'll put a link to on

Amazon again so for

instance I'll put a link to the photo

polymer resin here the standard or the

ABS

um I tend to use the ABS resin it just

it holds up a whole lot better it's a

little tougher you can see it's a little

darker than the standard water washable

gray but it's a great resin and you

could put it on a customer's finger

after you clean and cured it and they

can actually see what the ring is going

to look like so we're going to take a

quick look at the uh bluecast resin

website uh bluecast store here you can

get all the information you want just by

clicking on any of these you can

download the profiles right here and

it's it's if if you decide to get

yourself a 3D printer or you have one

and you're looking for the settings for

that particular printer just start here

um I think the file comes in a PDF form

so you're going to have to manually

enter the resin

settings that's okay however because

it's always good to enter your own resin

files um resin setting files in your

slicing software so we'll cover that in

another video when we start 3D printing

we'll also be covering some of the

formats here STL formats are the

preferred method of exporting from

blender to your 3D slicing

software now you can export into like

obj files um but I prefer to do STL file

formats blender does a nice job

exporting to an STL file and it kind of

gives you a little bit better

mesh typically slicy slicing software

prefers STL models to begin with however

a lot of them can do most 3D models STL

just seems to work good for me and I

really have gotten used to it there are

some things to think about when you are

exporting for instance when you export a

model let's say I design a piece let's

say I design a piece like this and I've

made this ring to be like a size seven

so we know the opening is like 7.9

millim for a size 7 I think it is 7 17.3

millim for a size 7 when I export this

model out to an STL I will often

increase the size of it for inance

instance I'll grab the ring shank here

and you can see I've got that selected

there we'll grab this head and you can

see that's the head there and let's see

come in here I think I've got no we're

good we're good there so grab these two

I'm going to select them with the shift

so I'll grab the head first and I'll

shift select and grab the ring shank

next and what I like to do just to make

sure my models are ready to go for 3D

printing is I double check them with the

face orientation so you come over here

to the overlays

tab let's see here overlays we're going

to hit that little drop down box and I'm

going to come over to face orientation

and what you'll see is that it turns the

model blue I'm going to isolate the ring

in the head if there's an error for

instance like here we've got a little

error in the model it's going to print a

radically on our 3D printer so seeing

that little red mark there I know

there's something wrong with this

particular hole so now I can go back and

I can fix that before I export it so I

can just come over here go back turn off

my face orientation overlay we're going

to click on this I'm going to hit tab

three and blender I'll go over this more

as we go on I'm going to hit a to select

all shift n and now you can see I've got

this little error here which is not good

I've got a diamond that I'm GNA have to

go and remove so that's that's a sample

of what you could possibly have as an

error in your model so keep that in

mind however let's just go ahead when I

go ahead and Export these two pieces I'm

going to come over to file going to come

down to export again if you followed me

along in the setup videos you are set up

to do or have blender work just like

this you will have an STL format right

here we're going to come over there we

got sample ring STL I'm going to hit

selection only and you can see here I've

got it marked up 1 Point 03 which is

going to make this ring 3% larger than I

modeled it the purpose of that is

because when I export it there's a

little shrinkage when it prints and

again when we cast there's going to be a

little shrinkage in the uh model when

it's cast very slight so to compensate

for that I do a 3% increase in my STL

export and that 99.9% of the time solves

the sizing issue of the model and uh

when we set Stones everything fits

perfectly and I never have issues

sometimes this will be a little clean up

but for the most part it's going to be a

perfect size so keep that in mind so STL

format is the preferred format for

importing and or exporting out a blender

into your 3D slicing software now I use

eligo and most eligo printers use sh2

box right now we're up to sh2 box

2.2 I'm currently using 2.1 I haven't

upgraded to 2.2 yet but however um they

work almost the same I think there's a

little bug fix in that one you can see

here I'm going to cover this right now

you can upgrade to sh2 box Pro I'm going

to be honest with you I did try the pro

version once I didn't like it I can't

justify spending over $150 a year to use

a pro version of anything that I don't

need so in in the jewelry business when

you're designing jewelry you almost

never need to have the pro version of

ch2 box keep that in

mind I'm not really going to walk you

through setting up your printer however

we're going to open up a model here so

I'm going to go to open we're going to

go over to our model here wherever that

is I'm just going to grab one of the

models that I imported here let Ste

we're going to grab this particular

model and I'm going to come over here

and look at it and you can see this ring

I did for a customer and if we look at

it it doesn't show any errors if it did

you could go ahead and hit the repair

button hopefully fix them if not you'll

have to go back to blender and change

your model up again during the modeling

process later on in later lessons we're

going to cover

that but for now I just want to show you

basically what the slicing software does

once you import your model it it'll get

built on the build port and it'll look

something it'll be upside down I'm going

to show you a picture of uh some sample

pieces I

did so keep that in mind your your build

gets build in Reverse or upside down we

we have to add supports now these

supports are going to attach to the

build plate and attach to your model and

they're going to support it as it's

being printed so now we have our model

tab here we'll come over to our supports

tab right here and we can choose light

middle and heavy supports you can

actually make changes to each of them

according to how you want your model to

work so for instance on this ring I'm

going to use light supports I'm going to

come over here and just H Auto support

so it's going to add in automatically

the supports that the slicing software

believes it needs I always create a

little raft it just makes taking the

model off the build plate a little

easier now if I want to add some more

supports I can I can just move this like

that and you can see all these little

contact points are points where it's

connecting a support to our model but

let's say I want one here I can come

over to add and I can add a support

right here I can add some supports

here and if I think I need like a

heavier support I can actually come come

up and grab a a medium

support and zoom in and we can add in a

little larger support to these areas

that if you think you need it you can

add

it now I'll bring that back down we'll

rotate it and look at the supports it's

going to print these supports get added

to your model for slicing and it's just

to support the model so it doesn't

wobble fall off break

Etc and I want you to keep in mind the

supports after you do the printing will

come off relatively easy I suggest that

you remove the supports before you do

the curing sometimes I do sometimes I

don't it's up to you and we'll cover

that later on in some other lessons

again you can mix and match light medium

heavy in each of your models you don't

have to do all light or all Heavy we'll

cover that in future lessons as I give

you samples of objects that we're going

to print and how they print

differently in addition to this I like

to print most rings of this nature

vertically however you're going to run

into you're going to run into certain

models that you can't do vertically and

you'll have to import them at an angle

so let's come back to our uh build plate

options I'm going to go ahead and open

another

model now this is an example of a

pendant that I did for a client now I

wouldn't print this flat I prefer to

print this at an angle so here I'm going

to select the model I'm going to come

over to rotate and I'm going to rotate

this on the red line so that it's

actually rotating kind of along the X

AIS and I'm going to get it to about

this

angle once that's done I'm going to look

at it on my build plate here and see

that that's kind of the orientation I

want the reason is this will give me

less warping depending on how I support

this i' probably give this more medium

supports than I would light weight and

avoid heavy supports so if we go back to

supports what I'm going to do here is

tell

Shu Buck just add in all the medium

supports automatically and then I'll go

in and I'll look at the supports and see

if I think I should add in any more

sometimes medium supports might cause

issues in your model so keep that in

mind and again I'm going to cover that

in future lessons how to support objects

that are smaller larger heavier bulkier

or

Hollow once we do that we can go ahead

and slice our object so I'll come back

over here and now I've got two objects

in my build

plate we we'll select our settings slice

settings and here you can select which

resin you want and currently I have

profile start out one which is my eligo

resin and that's the gray resin we can

come over here to the resin type and I

have eligo gray gray resin samples just

samples is my sample pieces that I give

to my clients um if I want to make any

changes here I will when I print my

sample pieces I print them at uh 03

millim and I do a bottom layer count of

10 the the gray resin cures at about 2.7

seconds per layer that's just to give me

a good adhesion to the build plate and a

good solid model the bottom exposure

time which would be the 10 first layers

it does it does for 35 seconds each

subsequent layers are done at 2.75 mil

uh seconds

each don't worry about all these

settings keep them as

standard and again if you're going to do

blue cast I have bluecast here I'll

select that and you can see the

differences for the blue cast uh we'll

come over to resin and here you can see

I have a castable resin normal settings

03 mm exposure time is 6.8 seconds

bluecast castable resin is a little bit

softer has a little more wax content in

it some other additives that keep it

very soft so we want to cure it for

approximately three times longer than we

do typical resins I have a bottom

exposure time these first 19 layers will

get an exposure time of 26 seconds each

I actually recommend 35 seconds each so

I'm going to change

that I'm going to do a bottom layer

count of 15 here oops 150 no we want

15

oops there we go and if you get an error

in your if it if if Shu box thinks that

you need to change something it'll put

this here however I'm leaving that at 15

just because I've work with this stuff

for so long again you can get the she or

you can get the she2 box settings for

bluecast resins right from bluecast

docomo and these are the settings that I

use for

that this is your machine type uh

Printing and then we've got advanced

settings whether using the grape resin

or the uh eligo or the bluecast resin um

there's certain considerations to think

about

one thing about 3D printers is a lot of

people will say this well the higher the

resolution of the screen on the 3D

printer makes for a better

model yes and no now 3D printers whether

they're you know the ABS type of or

their resin printers print in layers

you're always going to have layer height

issues you're going to get layer lines

what you want to try to do is mitigate

that by coming down as low as possible

and that's why I print at a layer height

of let's get back there of 03 millimet

for instance I've got this at four right

now

0.03 now printing at that level

mitigates my layer lines on my 3D prints

much more the X and Y resolution of your

screen isn't going to give you a better

looking model it's it's mostly a fallacy

it'll give you a little bit of detail on

the horizon but vertically you're still

going to have layer lines those can be

either sanded down before you cast or

you could um cast your model with the

layer lines and go and clean it up

afterwards typically what I do is just

cast it I'll clean it sand it polish it

up afterwards so that's the slicing

software in a nutshell cleaning and

curing your prints I'm going to put up a

little video here of you know what it

takes to get your models cleaned and

cured I'm just a brief sample of what I

was doing I have a cleaning station for

my printer it's made by eligo also and

it was made specifically for the build

plate size that I use um newer printers

there may not be a cleaning station for

those so consider that if you're

thinking about

that uh if you don't have a cleaning

station set up you can use a bucket full

of either isopropyl alcohol or denatured

alcohol in some cases water but I prefer

to use the denatured alcohol to clean my

models I'll clean them in the Cure

station as you can see here for about I

know 3 minutes once they're cleaned I'll

dry them off leaving them on the build

plate and then I will scrape them off

the build plate clean the rest of the

build plate and then cure my models in

the curing station the curing station is

both a cleaning and curing station so

you take the bucket of alcohol or

whatever you've got that you're using as

a solvent to clean your prints you take

that bucket off you put the little uh

rotating tray on and put your models on

that put the cover on and you can cure

your prints with the UV light on the

curing station so something good to have

um you're going to want to find a caring

or cleaning station for your specific

printer so I'm not going to list

anything here one of the other

considerations um cleaning and

maintaining your 3D printer now I have

done in the past a couple years ago how

I clean my 3D printers I have five of

them of various sizes and makes and

cleaning them is pretty much all the

same you're going to empty the resin

into the bucket that the resin came in

or into the bottle that the resin came

in originally you're going to to clean

the vat out the vat is the tray with the

plastic paper on the bottom or plastic

cellophane that cellophane is called fap

paper and it what it does is it gives a

break between the LCD light and your

model it's clean sheet of paper does

have to be changed now and then so keep

that in mind again I have videos of how

I clean my vets and how I change my fat

paper so I'll put those in the

description below so you can go ahead

and see that there's a million different

ways because there's a million different

people people doing this everybody has

an opinion this is just how I do it and

you know if it helps you great if you

find a better way to do it hey leave a

comment in the comment section below

some of the other things that you're

going to have to think about is in the

modeling stage making sure that your

model is ready for 3D printing so as you

saw here I've got a little error this

diamond kind of got added to our model

which is not cool we're going to have to

go cut that out um there's a lot of

different ways I could go ahead and cut

that out it shouldn't have been added

there in the first place I'm going to

I'm not going to cover that here but

when you get an error in your print or

in your model that that error will

transfer into the 3D slicing software so

again I showed you the overlay section

where we go down to face selection and

see the error in our model for instance

I'm going to go

ahead cancel that let's just go back you

can see here I've got that error here

and it shows in Red so when you don't

have the overlay

on turn that off so I turn off that it

looks like I basically just forgot to

cut the hole out for the gemstone well

that's not actually what happened there

was an error while I was doing that and

you have to be conscious of that as

you're modeling I tend to work a little

bit at a time and check my models as I'm

modeling them and that way I have very

few problems ever when I go back to do

my 3D prints again that'll be covered in

a future lesson uh probably cover that

in many lessons as we work through

getting all of this course

done guys that's pretty much it for the

3D printing section of this if you have

any questions leave them in the comments

section below um I will try to do a

follow-up video a Q&A of 3D printing for

this video and if you like it please

give it a thumbs up again uh we're going

to be moving into paid courses very soon

so while these are free right now um

you'll need to become either a member or

patreon supporter to see all of the

course itself thanks for watching guys

have a great day and look forward to

lesson six which is coming up soon