While the world’s eyes shift towards the World Cup, here is another competition touted as a “3D World Cup” — with an impressive winning project!
Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has won the top prize of S$10,000 (US$7,900) at the 2014 Singapore International Jewellery 3D Printing Competition organized by NTU Additive Manufacturing Centre (NAMC), the institute said Monday.
In this competition, NAMC was looking for orchid-inspired jewelry pieces that are distinctive and pleasurably wearable. Vanda Miss Joaquim, a hybrid orchid cultivar, was chosen in 1981 to be Singapore’s national flower. In this competition, jewelry is defined as small decorative items such as necklaces, bracelets, bangles, rings, earrings, and head or hair accessories.
There were a total of 71 entries submitted from seven countries. The top prize is awarded to the ITRI team for their “Orchid-Spirit” hairpin which features elegant gold 3D printed petals and a delicate pin with silver tincture. The pin can be transformed into a bracelet while the flower buds contain oil that releases fragrance over time….
…The 3D printed “Orchid-Spirit” hairpin weighs 66 gram. The design was built up layer by layer using direct metal laser sintering, an additive manufacturing technique that uses a laser as the power source to sinter powdered material. The “Orchid-Spirit” hairpin was printed in titanium, steel, cobalt, chromium and other metal materials, and each layer thickness was set at 20 to 30um. The whole printing process took about 10 hours to complete. After 3D printing, the final product was coated in gold….
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!