Paul Krush

3/20/2007  This page is not finished. I’m sure if it will ever be…

We are developing an online community that designs mass customized jewelry and shares these designs. If you would like to design jewelry in a professional and totally new way this might be for you. I (Paul Krush) am going to write software to make this easier, but I first want people to submit 2D designs to prove some of these concepts out. One of the theories I have is that certain creative individuals that are very social online will naturally promote and add to this community.

To test out the market we are asking people to design very simple rings that can modeled in 2D using closed curves. The designs will be posted to our website so it’s not a private thing. This will help greatly in writing FAQ’s for future use.

More in this post:
Post Template files, and examples.
More renders and pictures, use from that auction.
Explain how the curves will get wrapped around a ring.

——————–

So, you want to make your own simple ring, and all you have to start out with is just a template file you downloaded with some rectangles and blue text. It seems like a pretty straight forward affair, to type whatever you want and have it fit on the ring of your choice. But hold up, there are a couple simple things to keep in mind that will help ensure what you have envisioned will be what you get.

Summery of rules:
1.) Must be closed curves inside and not touching bounding box.
2.) No other objects in the file.
3.) What else? Numbers?

Some things to watch out for:

1.) Text Width

One important thing to remember is that while you are creating perfectly clear and clean text on the computer, it must still be made into metal eventually. As such, there are some things that metal simply can not do. If you have a font that creates a line of raised metal that will only be something like 0.1 mm wide and 0.5 mm high (the default height), that a strip of metal like that is guaranteed to break off during the molding process. Similarly, if the width of a sunken letter is only 0.1 mm, our milling machine will not be able to get into such a tiny crevice to properly carve out the shape of the letter.

A good rule of thumb is to make raised letter at least 0.25 mm wide. Sunken text should not be thinner than 0.20 mm wide. Unfortunately, this does make it difficult to work with certain fonts.

2.) Spacing

This is pretty similar to the issue of Text Width. Simply put, it is best if raised letters are at least 0.27 mm apart and sunken letters are at least 0.25 mm apart. This also covers internal spacing, such as the hole in the center of an ‘O’. If you’re not careful, the letters on your ring might lose definition from being to close to one another.

3.) Simple, Completely Closed Curves

Depending on what program you are using to create your text and designs, this may be easier to spot. When you send in text curves to us, it helps us out immensely if you can make sure all your letters are completely closed curves and don’t overlap themselves at any point.

It seems that something like that should be easy enough to spot. If there’s a gap in a curve, you close it up. The problem is that a lot of fonts that you might download or what not often will have very, very tiny gaps in their outline, or surprisingly small loops that you have to look out for. Similarly, if the font is cursive, letters may overlap and you should probably clean up such areas.

Just double check your curves before you send them in and you should be just fine.

4.) Edge

Unfortunately, the bounding boxes are not really suggestions, but the very limit of what you can work with. Because the bounding boxes signifies where the ring physically ends, if any part of the designs hangs out of the bounding box it will most likely be lost. In the case of sunken text, it will simply vanish over the edge of the ring. In the case of raised text, where there are walls above and below the text, it will probably butt into the wall and get lost.

As such, I actually recommend giving the bounding box a little berth. Staying around 0.3 mm away from the border of the bounding box for sunken text will ensure that your design won’t go over the edge of the ring. For raised text I recommend staying as much as 0.5 mm away from the red bounding box.

Bounding Box Sizes: