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:
-
End the trial and have these samples as they are.
-
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 
