ZBrushCentral

How to get designs made into jewelry?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m guessing there are a lot of Z-Brush artists here who have made jewelry from their designs, and I need some expertise.

What was your workflow for doing that?
Did you hire an individual or company to do the prototyping?
Did you buy a CAD/CAM machine and mill the wax yourself?
How about going from wax to metal? Did you hire someone for that?
Are there any good websites where one can send a file and have a wax prototype made and sent to you?
What file format(s) are the standard for CAD/CAM?

I have many questions, so any info will be helpful.
Thanks in advance.

1 Like
#2

Um… anybody?
Don’t rush in all at once now.

#3

I didn’t order from them yet, I just heard a few good things about the results: http://www.protowax.co.uk/ . I intend to try their services in the near future.
You can find info about their workflow recommendations there, check the FAQs. Probably there are tons of other services out there with similar results, I only heard they are reliable (OK, hearsay level, I admit :slight_smile: ). For the wax to metal process I can’t give you exact recommendations, since I have a smelter in my family who will help with the precision smelting and shaping, he is the pro with that, but I think that a jewelry maker can give you recommendations locally.

#4

The New York Times has an artical about a 3D printer and if you Google 3D Printing there is a great deal of information about the subject, also some link to You Tube video’s.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/15/technology/personaltech/20110915-BASICS.html?ref=technology

Hope this helps

Wazer

#5

hi im a jeweller and use zbrush alot in designing i use shapeways.com for masters usually in hi res plasic, which i then make a rtv mold of, to get an initial wax. i know that they do metal, stainless steel and silver direct from file but have not tried that direction. one of the problems i found was getting the dimensions right, so i find it easier to go to plastic first, but then i have a casting shop, hope this helps you can check out some of the things ive done whith zbrush files on mattglaze.com good luck m

#6

:Dhi me again having read your post again a few other points
i use sts files from the 3d file exporter and bring my mesh down to under 50k with the decimation master plugins.
idealy for silver or gold castings you want a wall thickness minimum of 0.7mm but be aware that making the walls too thick make a piece heavy and therfore expensive.
i have tried numerous times to cast direct from a 3d printed plastic master, in my opinion its not worth it, first you get residue from the plastic in the casting, and i have tried longer and higher temperature burn out to attempt to rectify this to no avail.
also most 3d printers leave very slight ridges as they build up the layers, looking at a plastic print this might not look to serious but in silver or gold looks bad.
i havnt tried shapeways, direct to silver solution, looking at their site it looks good, and i believe their first step is to print a hi res wax which may get over the ridging problem, but i would suggest getting a test plastic done first, as its quite difficult to judge some aspects of a 3d design on a 2d screen, and you could save yourself a lot of money and disapointment.
most larger casting shops should be able to make you a rtv mold from a plastic and pull some waxes from it, this allows you to ajust the waxes before they are cast, which is fairly straight forward, paying regard to the ridging problem and wall thickness, you can also guesstimate the final weight of the piece by weighing the wax and mutiplying it by 10 for silver and 14for gold again idealy you dont want a pendant that weighs over15 gms and an earing shouldnt weigh more than 5gms comfort wise

#7

Thanks for the info! This ProtoWax place is where I will probably start. They seem really good. They take STL files and after researching I discovered that Z-Brush has a plug-in for exporting to this format.
http://www.pixologic.com/blog/2009/05/new-zbrush-plug-in-3d-printer-exporter/
This seems like a good workflow.