Small Grants: Nounish Jewelry

Nounish Jewelry

After several weeks of dwelling on the possibility to extend the collectible value of nouns in the physical realm, I teamed up with my wife and finally decided to give this a try.

But why jewelry?
Precious metals are one of the best ways to preserve art because they can last generations, and this collection is part of a limited run which makes the items highly collectible.

Why Noun heads as pendants?
Since we’re not using colors, the Noun heads are way more recognizable than bodies and are more efficient for the product to adapt in case it needs it (a pendant can be used in a necklace or a bracelet).

Requested Funds: 3.3 ETH (at the current rate of $1,500)
The funds will cover the following:

  • 3D modeling, testing, and iterations: 0.5 Eth (0.1 per head).
  • 3D printing, and post-processing: 0.5 Eth (0.1 per head).
  • Wax 3D printing and clean-up: 0.5 Eth (0.1 per head).
  • Master mold, handling, and storage: 1 Eth (0.2 per head).
  • Final samples (5 heads) made of solid Silver 950: 0.8 Eth.

Deliverables:
5 Nouns heads ( ~28 mm² each ) made of sterling silver 950, which will be used as prototypes for this collection, all the necessary tests will be made for these items, to ensure we can deliver a high-quality product worth collecting during the next centuries.

Timeline:
If Small Grants accept the proposal and send the Eth during the next week (Mon 25 to Fri 29), we can schedule the production for these heads starting on Monday, August 1st, because I already reserved a slot for that week. And the production could take around 3 to 4 weeks starting that day.


If this proposal is successful, and the prototypes are good enough (which I think will be), we can make a bigger self-sustained proposal in which we can expand the collection and make the official products available to the public.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this.
Feedback is highly appreciated, have a great day!

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cool! let’s do it. excited about you working on a new nounish project!

Yesserrr! let’s do this :saluting_face:

we on it! https://nounsonchain.wtf/

how many of the prototypes got made? of which type? i see you offer a few things for sale just want to understand what our grant got us

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UPDATE

After several weeks working closely with the factory/jeweler + 3D printing company we learn tons of valuable information.
The extreme TLDR: We have samples, but they are not perfect (6.9 out of 10).

So, we made a lot of iterations with the 3D printing crew, and we made 7 samples of Sterling Silver for this trial, the testing phase was extremely succesful, but we didn’t achieve the quality we are looking for, and this is because several reasons:

1. The Jeweler: We found a great company to work with, but this is the first time they have pixel characters in their factory, and that means we had to learn together step by step on this, which took more time than we expected and lots of calls and factory visits. We made the same samples 2 times and had to recycle one batch that didn’t go well, and that way we saved some money to be under the budget we asked for.



(This was the first batch, it was really bad and we had to make a new casting, the company wanted to charge more money but we insisted this wasn’t the product we were looking for, they lose because the result was obvious and we made a new set)

2. The 3D printing process: We hired a local company to handle the 3D designs and printing for this, and they are wonderful. However, the 3D models needed a lot of iterations, and we had to make dozens of printings that went bad, and we had to adjust the dimensions for this to keep a good aspect for the pendants, not only for the 3D printing phase, but in the silver casting and polishing process.


*The red dots are the samples the factory took as master molds to develop the second batch of silver samples.

After weeks making calls, visits, and iterations on this, we knew the most expensive side of this was the tooling and handling of the Silver pieces, not only because the silver itself but because the fees from the company (which was too secretive in the process have to say, they didn’t want us to visit the factory and take pictures, so they just send one photo… yeah I know)

The pieces look good enough but they don’t have the quality we are looking for, and this won’t be good for any party of this collaborative effort, but we found the root of the problem, the 3D printed pendant. In the previous picture we shared the progress of the printed pieces. The vertical line divides the models, the latest prints were the result of improving the 3D models based on the quality of the first silver batch.

This is the second batch of pendants, these pieces look a bit better but for some strange reason the jeweler made the pieces with a different finishing (maybe he wanted to experiment, but that wasn’t the guideline), he used a matte finish for this instead of a plain polish, and the texture of the piece was even more noticeable, which is not good.

After that, we had to pay for two extra pieces (cat and heart), this time, the pieces are better polished, but in a desperate attempt to remove the print lines, the jeweler polished the cat with a different brush and ruin the lower part of the cat head, we talked with them to fix this but if they keep polishing, the piece will lose the mouth detail.

So, to avoid polishing too much the silver pieces, we need the most pristine 3D prints, and that can be achieved with the DLP technology (we were using SLA tech), I can expand more on that but basically, the DLP tech has a better print resolution (and it’s a bit more expensive) although both of them are using resing printing.

(We already updated the 3D models, they look better but need to be printed with better tech in order to be sharper + they now have to be tested by the factory until they look perfect. The left model was the one the factory used as the master mold)


We received 3.5eth @ ~1.72K= ~6K USD, but we surpassed the budget by making two extra attempts (cat and heart), and printing more samples until making something clean enough and find the best character heads for this project in case we continue this test (we spent around $950).

So, we have two options here:

  1. End the trial and have these samples as they are.

  2. Continue the trial with 2.5 extra eth (at the rate of $1.5K= $3,750), to cover factory tooling, and 3D printing costs, this process could take around 4 - 5 weeks depending on the factory and 3D company schedule. We can use those funds to make more silver samples, but improve the quality until we reach at least 9.5/10, and cover the extra money we used for the extra samples.

All the previous molds are basically useless (except the 3D models), so we need to start almost from scratch here (this is just for the silver samples), they (the factory) need to make molds and castings + clean up all over again (they need to do this because the previous molds have the print lines and we’ll have the same results), but we have cleaner prints now, that means the next silver samples will be way better than the current ones because they don’t need to polish the piece too much and they will preserve more details

I’ll be ready for your feedback, thanks so much for funding this Nounish idea :saluting_face: :star_struck:

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@messhup If you need any help at all with modeling and master prints please let me know. I hate seeing so much good effort go to waste with bad prototypes. =( you guys have access to someone that does this all day on a very very high level and is committed to nouns so if you get stuck please let me know glad to help.

The pendants look great.

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hey, thanks for the update messhup

this process seems very complicated and i am reluctant to continue to fund this with more NSFW ETH when the outcome still seems very uncertain to me, and it is not clear if there will be any demand for this jewelry to justify an even larger ask after the prototypes are complete

i would change my mind if

  • i felt confident that the next prototype funding would have no issues
  • there is demonstrated demand for this jewelery

thank you so much for trying, please let me know what you think

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no uninvited shoe-horning, but let me know if anything I can do to help here mesh.

but have to admit I was surprised at the lack of interested for nounsonchain.wtf jewelry

Thanks @BigshotKlim
Definitely will take your advice here my friend, thanks for the support.

@vsvsvs Thanks so much man! I loved the Nouns On Chain btw, I even follow the account on twitter.

@noun22
No problem ser, I understand that the outcome is not optimal.
Really appreciate the trust and support on this prop since the beginning :saluting_face:

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