We couldn’t really consider ourselves modern day makers until we tackled a semi-ambitious 3D printing project. Our friends’ wedding gave us a perfect incentive to get that much needed merit badge. We decided on a tie and bracelet.

The pieces were modeled parametrically in Houdini (a high end digital film effects tool), and the resulting 3D model was sent to Shapeways for 3D printing.

We (digitally) engraved the two key sterling silver pieces with the theme of the wedding:

The material was ‘strong&flexible‘, laser sintered. And strong it is. Even under rough handling, we have not yet broken or irreversibly bent it.

The connector pieces were 1mm thick, with a .1mm precision. The pegs fit snugly in the holes. Except with the sterling silver pieces, where we had to enlarge the holes a bit to make ‘em fit. Understandable as the silver is a cast from a wax 3D print.

We had the silver tie piece printed from the 3 available nylon colors, so the piece can be interchanged as desired.

Same for the connectors.

The entire tie can be flipped to show the connector rings (‘Tim Burton style’).

As the top part is 1 piece, we printed two versions of it.

A newlywed Jason wearing his tie:

For those interested, this shows the parametric setup in Houdini:

Best watch in HD on Vimeo.

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The bracelet was parametrically deduced from the tie (they have almost the same topology).

Sharon wearing the bracelet:

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Rest of Flickr picture set.