Tofty's 3D Printed Silver Torches (pic heavy)

Thanks everyone for the kind words, i'm glad you all like them.
I can't really reply to everyone now but i'll answer all the questions:

I wish it were that simple; the silver parts were all made in a single piece, sprued together, by shapeways as they offer the cheapest price for large silverwork.
The gold plated brass bezel ring and tail ring were ordered as seperate parts from i.materialise as they are the only ones to offer this material and finish.
There is still some size adjustment needed to improve the fit and finish of some of the parts but not much.
All the other components were ordered from illumination supply and LED-TECH.de except the tritium vials which i got off ebay.
Put all these bits together and it quickly gets very expensive.
If you are interested in building this light please contact me through my shapeways profile, although i plan to improve on this light over the coming months so ordering these parts may not be the best idea.

I started this project late July but ordering things from the 3D printers can take awhile so it's been quite off and on. Perhaps 10 hours CAD work and 5 hours assembly when it all finally arrived.
If you want to read more about how this project evolved;- have a look at this <a href="http://forum.multitool.org/index.php/topic,38951.0.html">Multitool.org thread</a>

xtrajack was correct that hallmarking is a verification of silver quality. It's a bit out of date now due to silvers low value, much more important for gold and platinum jewellery.
I just can't pass up the chance to pretend i've made something worthy of a stamp of quality.


I'm going to order a plastic prototype of the AAA light in a few days so i'll post up some pictures when it arrives.

Thanks alot guys, i thought people had forgotten about this thread.

I've seen what the alox pox can do to others and their wallets so i'm staying well away from those infected, unfortunately since being the first to contract the T-virus i've found the medication to be frightfully expensive.......and time consuming, i've got to make it myself you know. Thanks.

Thanks Josh, i love just looking around on shapeways as every now and then i see something new and exciting, but usually far too expensive, i've done my best but most of my stuff is still too costly to attract sales.
Hopefully the overall price of 3D printing will come down a fair bit in the near future.

Thanks Metro, your starting on a slippery slope so be careful, i've found 3D printing to be quite addictive and to the detriment of all my traditional machining projects.
It's really useful though and great for solving those problems that have halted projects and ideas in the past.

If you ever decide to have pieces made in stainless steel or silver for functional purposes there are some resizing factors that need to be taken into account that i've come to after a fair bit of trial and error.
Shapeways don't bother explaining this at all but shrinkage can be a real problem, especially with stainless steel as different features shrink by different amounts.
Silver is relatively easy requiring an oversize of 2%, at least thats what i used on the torch and all the dimensions came out close enough for threads to work and components to fit.

And then sell your models to others through their online shop, at least in theory.


Here is the AAA torch host in Alumide which is an aluminium powder infused plastic (not conductive, an electrical path had to be added):










I also had a diffuser cap made from transparent plastic:








I have ordered this light in full sterling silver which should hopefully arrive before this years end.