Printing Spike
(a necklace that takes a while to make by hand)
Spike is a necklace I originally made as a present. Turned out, I really liked it, so I made a second one for myself. It takes ages. The neckalce is about 40 links long, each link has 4 solder joins, and each one takes about 15 minutes to make and polish.....so the necklace takes around 10 hours.

I wanted to experiment with this necklace more and I didn't want to spend that long generating forms, so I made it digitally.
I started with one tooth, which I then arrayed to link together. I wanted to print as many links as I possible could so I then arranged all the links in a compact spiral.

The result looked a bit chaotic, but I wasn't really expecting it to look simple.I put it in the slicing software and....well, it looked EVEN more complicated.

The structues that the slicing software created are support structures, they allow the model to stick to the build place while printig. I hit the print button and waited around 2-3 hours. The amazing thing about Threedo (and in fact all SLA printers) is the time the print takes is to do with how tall the model is, not how mich space it takes up on the build plate. If you are savvy, you can cat your print time right down, which is something you can't do using an additive layer printer.


Now before you can start taking the support structures off, you have to cure the excess resin. A bit of time on a turn table next to a UV light works fine.

