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Mainly used to create small parts, our Sterling Silver material is perfect to manufacture jewelry. Here are all information and advice to help you print your 3D model in our Sterling Silver (metal) material.
Sculpteo’s silver material is composed of 92.5% sterling silver and 7.5% metal alloy. The final product is solid but susceptible to scratching and wear as would a sterling silver product purchased from a mass-producing jewelry store.
What to do with Silver?
Silver is principally used to create jewelry. Indeed, this material is perfect to create small parts, with great quality. The various finishing options offered by Metal Casting will allow you to give life to amazing jewelry and decorative parts.
Pricing and delivery
The printing price of your design is calculated automatically the moment it is placed online. As you modify your object you will note that the price changes automatically. The pricing is based on a series of factors, including: total volume, object size, and bounding box.
Turn around time for our silver material is 15 to 21 business days. That delay can vary depending on our 3D printers’ load. The estimated shipping time is also calculated automatically as the object is uploaded.
Delivery time is in addition to the processing time. The shipping speed is determined by the shipping option you choose at checkout.
What is the 3D printing process for Silver?
For our silver 3D prints, we use a lost-wax casting technique, where the original wax model is first printed using our 3D printers. From there a mold is made around the wax, before it is melted and filled with silver, creating your object.
Finishings options available for our Silver material
We propose 2 different finishes for your silver object’s exterior surface.
Raw: The model goes through a quick sanding process, removing any of the large impurities in the object. The remaining surface is rough but wearable as a ring or otherwise.
Mirror Polish: The model is polished to a mirror shine in three steps through a tribofinishing machine. The hand polishing uses a method of subtractive polishing, thus finer details may be less visible after the process. The inside of the object will also not be polished as it cannot be reached by hand.
While designing your parts, please take into consideration the minimum detail volume. If the restrictions are not respected, elements too thin and too sharp edges will be smoothed out while being polished, affecting the look of your model.
As a result, it is important that your uploaded file is the highest quality possible, such that no triangulation will occur in the final print. Yet, keep in mind that your 3D file cannot be up to 50Mb in size.
The layer thickness for our Sterling Silver is 25 µm. Shrinkage may occur during the printing process. Thus, parts should be designed with the following shrinkage considerations:
Raw parts: up to 2% shrinkage (On Average)
Polished parts: up to 3% shrinkage (On Average)
Minimum size
2.4 x 2.4 x 0.8 mm
Maximum size
125 x 125 x 40 mm
Minimum wall thickness
0.8 mm
Minimum wall thickness stemmed elements
1 mm
Minimum wall thickness particular design aspects
1 mm
The walls of your design must adhere to a minimum thickness of 0.8 mm in order to guarantee the structure will be supported without breaking under its own weight. If the walls of your model are less than 0.8 mm, you should simply thicken the walls in a 3D designing program or choose a material more adapted for thin designs.
A stemmed element is a design aspect that is at least twice as long as it is thick. For unsupported and stemmed elements or parts of the design with a particular design constraint, it is also important to respect a minimum thickness of 1 mm in order to guarantee the object will not break.
With a 0.8 wall thickness, your design will be slightly flexible. To obtain more rigidity, we advise a 2mm wall thickness. Silver is a relatively malleable and heavy material, it can be distorted if too much weight is applied to an area of your object. We recommend that you thicken the most stressed parts, or choose a more fitting material for your design.
Tip
Silver is a relatively malleable material. The most stressed and fragile areas may be distorted. We recommend that you thicken them to avoid distortions.
Sculpteo offers an online solidity check tool that highlights parts of the print that may be too thin for a print. From there you are able to tweak your design in order to create an object that is an appropriate thickness. To use it, you just need to upload your 3D file, select your material and click on the “Verification” tab.
Do not forget
Keep in mind that our solidity check tool does not detect physical aberrations such as floating parts, unstable position, parts supporting too much weight relative to their thickness, etc. Particular care must be given to the geometry of your design and the most stressed parts must be thickened.
Minimum size of details (mm)
0.4
Minimum height and width details (mm)
Embossed : 0.5 Engraved: 0.4
Minimum height and width for a readable text (mm)
Width: 0.5 Height 1.5
Enlargement ratio
1/1
For silver, the main determining factor in a detail minimum size is the casting process. As an object is copied into a mold then refilled with silver, some etched and embossed details become more complicated to fill. Thus in order for a detail and text to be visible and will not break we recommend following our recommended sizes at the very least. To ensure better visibility, details’ width must be at least as big as their depth.
Enclosed parts?
No
Interlocking parts?
No
Silver models do not have the ability to be printed with objects enclosed within another object. This is because the object is first printed in wax, which requires supports for otherwise free-floating objects.
Minimum spacing between fixed walls
0.3 mm
Minimum clearance between parts
0.3 mm
For a successful 3D print in the wax that will later be cast into silver, a minimum space of 0.3 mm is required. This allows enough space for the excess was liquid to drain from between the object’s walls during the printing process. A gap of less than that will result in a fault in the final design.
Assembly?
No
Assembled pieces are currently not possible with our silver printing option.
Hollowing?
No
As the print is first carried out in wax, the object cannot be hollowed in the manner some of our other materials are able.
Files with Multiple Objects?
No
This is not possible to 3D print a 3D file containing several objects in silver.
With Sculpteo’s online 3D printing service you’re just a few clicks away from professional Sterling Silver 3D printing. Your 3D model is printed with the highest quality and delivered straight to your door.
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