www.3ders.org

Sep 28, 2016 | By Andre

One of the beautiful things about 3D printing is how closely the software side of things marries directly into the hardware side. While the technology has always been a familiar force for industrial designers and artists as a medium to produce their work, it's the automated algorithms that have, in recent times, been popping up to make what was once a difficult task into something quick and painless.

Take the Encode Ring by Japanese startup 3Dwave for example. They already demonstrated how they can take a 3-second audio file uploaded by their customer, create a 3D representation of the sound wave and convert it into an elegant, hyper personalized 3D printed ring.

When originally announced early in 2016, the process to convert the audio to a 3D model file that can be 3D printed was essentially done by hand. Not in the steel foundry, smelting metal to the perfect form kind of way no, but in that 3D designers would need to convert the visual representation of sound onto the ring file before 3D printing could take place.

But thanks to some smart coding and behind the scenes software, the company has recently announced that the Encode Ring can be produced in its digital state online and on the fly via their easy to use website.

And after giving it a few tries I can ensure you that it’s incredibly straightforward to move from a quick 3-second recording of your voice (or anything else for that matter) to seeing how it would look as a ring to selecting the material, finish and shipping options.

The final piece comes in a range of materials from steel, gold, silver or platinum and vary in price from roughly $130 - $1300USD and you can very easily dictate the diameter to perfectly fit your finger.

While it is not completely clear what 3D printer is used and the polish procedures used to give it that all around perfect finish, it is known that they relied heavily on Solufa’s web3d open-source library to make the described system work in a real-time manner.

With international shipping easy to access on the purchase page, this really does seem like a unique way to show someone special you care about them. Just imagine, you get on one knee and she breaks down in tears, “oh yes I’ll marry you!” she pours out in reply. At which point you take the recording you just made of her emotional affirmation, upload it to the site, wait a few weeks for the ring to arrive and hand it to her. It doesn’t get any more romantic than that.

But no matter who and why you have a ring like this created for, I think the automation behind it will really set it apart from the service they had previously established earlier in the year. It becomes a service based entirely on 3D printing and finishing files automatically generated by some nifty code instead of needing a designer to manually work on each individual order.

 

 

Posted in 3D Software

 

 

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