Earlier this year I was awarded the a-n Professional Development Bursary for a Rhino CAD 3D drawing course at British Academy of Jewellery delivered by head of department Jack Meyer. It was an intensive 4-day training course for beginners, which developed my knowledge and skills of 3D printing and jewellery manufacturing techniques.
I am contemporary jewellery designer-maker and I create intricate 3-dimensional textured jewellery through experimenting with different materials and techniques. I am always looking for new ways of making jewellery. Therefore, I wanted to introduce 3D printing technology in my making process because I believe using 3D technology would enable me to create much stronger designs and have them in precise flawless finish.
3D CAD drawing is a tool that helps to interpret a complicated design, for example, a very intricate texture or a perfectly symmetrical or asymmetrically organic piece. My aim from doing this course was to learn and master this technology and then transfer it into my own designs. I ultimately want to develop new jewellery collection that would be combination of 3d printing and keeping some parts hand crafted.
The course was life changing and eye opening for the possibilities of 3D printing. Understanding how easy it can be to draw most intricate 3D ring in just 30 minutes, which otherwise would have taken at least 3 days to make it on the bench.
In 4 day course we learnt to use all of the tools that are useful for jewellery drawing. We started from basic commands and drawing primitive shapes and gradually moved to more complicated pieces of jewellery.
Day 1 was an introduction into the programme and it was all about organising models with layers. This included precision modelling, building basic objects with curves and basic transformation commands. By the end of the day we were asked to use all the tools we learnt to build a basic human shape
In Day 2 we learnt essential of 3D solid modelling strategies based on curves and using Boolean commands. We also constructed basic band ring, solitaire ring and eternity band. Jack showed us best ways to prepare files for 3D printing and best places to do so in London.
