Shapeways goes gold

Fab n’ ship cats Shapeways continues to offer fun new materials; this time, gold.

From today until the 30th you can order Gold Plated Stainless Steel. This new material gives our 3D printed Stainless Steel a pure gold finish. This will let people create jewels and jewelery using 3D printing with a lot more bling than before! A product in this material has an introductory price with start up cost of $5 and costs $10 per cubic centimeter.

The process is identical to the Stainless Steel 3D printing process only as a final step your model is lowered into and submerged in a gold bath. The outer layer is then firmly coated in gold. In order for us to be able to do this there has to be some kind of eyelet or ‘limb’ that we can use to tie the model up so we can lower it into the gold bath (and I bet you thought we were all high tech). If you look at the models above they all have something like that. A marble on the other hand would not work. Furthermore the model must be able to sink in the gold bath so enclosed spaces that make it float are not permitted. The maximum build volume for this material is 31 CM by 26 CM by 20 CM so feel free to start ordering your Buddhist temple parts from us.

What do you think, readers? What sort of project would you like to output in gold?