Pt, 18k, Garnet pendant

Here is a piece I recently finished. It is Platinum, 18k yellow gold, and a garnet.

The platinum parts are hand fabricated, the gold parts were modeled in ZBrush, 3d printed and cast.  The garnet was cut by John Dyer.  I bought it in Tucson in 2017. 

new pendant

Last week I finally finished this pendant.  I did the design in ZBrush while I was living in Korea.  A customer wanted me to make them a custom piece and chose this one out of several designs I presented.  I am glad she liked the finished piece.  I am always worried the customer won't be happy when they see the finished piece.  I am mostly happy with how it came out.  The materials are 18k yellow and white gold and a yellow sapphire.  This isn't the first piece I have done with CAD, but I think it is the first one I have done all the work on, from designing it with CAD to finishing the metal piece.

cat earrings

I was looking through this blog yesterday and today and realized there are a lot of things I never got around to posting.  Below are some cat earrings I made around the end of last year.  I had Shapeways print them in wax and my friend in the US cast them in silver and finished them.  I also had them print some in plastic and in steel as a pendant. 

Zbrush pearl pendant

This is a pendant I made in Zbrush earlier this year.  The sphere in the middle is a pearl.  I will definitely make this one once I am back in the US.  This design has a slight problem I don't like, but other than that, it is one of those designs I made and didn't think much about it at the time, then I looked at it months later and realized I really liked it. 

CAD stuff

I've been working on CAD consistently since my last post.  Mostly ZBrush.  I really enjoy it but I've learned it well enough that I am trying to put more time in to learning Rhino now.  I have also started learning MODO a little.  It seems it will be really useful to use in conjunction with ZBrush. 

In September I got a Wacom Cintiq Companion for ZBrush.  I love it.  There's a couple things they could have done better, but overall it is great.  Working directly on the screen is much better than looking at the cursor on the screen while using the pen someplace else.  I rarely do any work at home, that's why I got the Companion rather than a normal Cintiq.

 

 I recently had  Shapeways, a 3D printing company, 3D print some things for me.  A couple waxes, some plastic pieces, and one steel piece.  My friend in the US is casting the waxes for me.  After they are done my parents are going to send everything to me.  These are the first things I have had 3D printed.  I have only seen the pictures my parents sent, but from what I have seen, I am not too impressed with the level of detail.

CAD process pics aren't very interesting, so I haven't felt much reason to post them. Here are some finished, or nearly finished designs I have done.  Most of these were primarily done in ZBrush.  Usually I make the basic shape in Rhino, then import the file to ZBrush to sculpt on it.

 Some pendants...

 I'm not sure this ring could actually be made in metal and keep all the detail.

 3 stone ring.

 

 Another pendant...

This last one is the only design here that I did completely in Rhino.  

zbrush pendant

This is a pendant I was making in ZBrush recently.  I enjoy working on ZBrush, but one problem I think I will have is that I am working on something enlarged much larger than the size it will be manufactured.  I think I am often putting in details that will never show up in the final piece, after 3d printing, casting, and cleaning/polishing.  This pendant for example, the finished piece would probably be about 30mm high, but on my computer I am working on details with it enlarged to about 12"+ high.  I don't know how fine of details will make it through to the final piece.  I still haven't tried printing anything, so I don't know how it will be. 

Zbrush

Around January or February I decided to stop trying to learn Rhino and Zbrush at the same time and just concentrate on one for a while.  Zbrush was the obvious choice.  It was more interesting to me than Rhino and I was already spending much more time on it than Rhino.  I also think it's more difficult to learn than Rhino. Mostly I have been doing tutorials on DigitalTutors.com.  The focus of that site is mostly for graphics, not manufacturing, but I can apply most of it to sculptural jewelry forms. 

Here are some of the things I have completed.  These are tutorial projects, not my designs:

Rhino and ZBrush

I've been doing pretty well learning Rhino for the past 3 months.  There are still so many things I don't know how to do, so it alternates between fun and frustrating.  I was just reading a post from 2007 about trying to learn Matrix and how it wasn't very interesting to me.  I think my situation now, living in Korea and not having a studio, is really the only way I can learn it.  CAD is only interesting to me now that I no longer have a studio.

I also started learning another program called ZBrush.  I've been using it for about 2 months now.  It's digital sculpting, it's like working with clay on the computer.  I'm using a Wacom tablet and even though that is a pen on a flat surface, using it with ZBrush still gives me enough of a feeling of working with an actual material that  I think a lot of the skills I learned sculpting with real clay and wax have carried over.  It's a lot of fun but still frustrating in its own ways.

This pic is something I've been working on in ZBrush, following a tutorial on DigitalTutors.com.  It's about half finished.

The hardest part about learning this software (both Rhino and ZBrush) is being a total beginner at something again.  With metal I have always tried to keep learning new skills, and how to work with different materials but every time I started something new I was already bringing all my previously learned skills to it.  For example, at the time I took some machine shop classes, learning to use machine tools (lathe, vertical and horizontal mills, surface grinder) was very different from all the hand work I had previously done in metal.  But I was able to pick it up quickly because I already had about 10 years as a craftsman.  Working on the computer everything is new.  I said earlier in this post that I felt that the experience I had sculpting with real materials helped me ZBrush, but there's so many other things to think about when using the software that make it complicated.  And with Rhino, nothing I have learned previously helps me with it, except for design considerations.