3D Printed Jewelry

This project was created as a course assignment at the California State University, Long Beach; taught by Behnaz Farahi: DESN 551: Materials, Tools, and Techniques of Prototype.

For this assignment we had to pick an object found naturally in nature (ex. flower, stone, fruit) and turn it into a 3D printed piece of jewelry.

I decided to create a orchid necklace. I went with the orchid because of the amount of detail the flower has on its petals. After deciding on my object, I was introduced to two new applications Scaniverse and Meshmixer.

I used Scaniverse to scan the object and then transferred it into Meshmixer to clean the it up. After finishing the scan and cleaning it up I then sent it in to be printed and added the final pieces to make it into a necklace.

• iPhone 13 pro
• App Scaniverse
• Desktop program Meshmixer

First, find someone who has an iPhone 13 pro. I didn't have an iPhone so I had to ask a friend who had the 13 pro, then I downloaded the app called Scaniverse.

It is a fairly easy app to use but I highly recommend you first do some practice shots to get the hang of the app, set aside dedicated time, and have lots of patience. For a good quality scan, you want to move the phone as still and smoothly around your object as possible. However, even doing so it is not guaranteed a good scan; my friend and I spent over 2 hours and many scans were saved before we got the "perfect" scan, this is why I also said to set aside dedicated time and have patience because it can be time consuming and frustrating at times (but this was my own experience).

Once I got my final scan I saved it in the app as an **.obj file** and emailed it to myself and then took it to the my computer to the next program called Meshmixer.

After getting my .obj file, I imported it into Meshmixer. In Meshmixer I only went in to clean around the surrounding, deleting everything besides my object.

Then after cleaning up the surrounding, I added thickness to the petals of my orchid because they were too thin and was told would be too fragile and would break easily. I added thickness by using the brush tool and selecting a smooth brush to add thickness around the petals.

Lastly, because I decided to make it into a necklace, so I made a small hole where I'd add the bail and chain for the for it to hang off of.

After being satisfied with the final result, I sent the file again as an .obj file for printing. The print was ready the next day and after cleaning the final result up, I added the bail and chain to complete the look.