Birthday present from a 3D printer

Even the best idea for a birthday gift means little if it cannot be turned into reality. An exclusive pipe as a one-of-a-kind piece made of pure silver would certainly be considered a unique gift in this regard. A gift that can actually be produced in batch size one, thanks to 3D technology.  

The idea was to create a particularly unique birthday gift for a Russian private citizen. Work involving a love for detail resulted in the design of a silver pipe, which could easily be considered a small work of art. But the actual challenge was to implement the idea into practice.

After finding a foundry that was able to cast the pipe in pure silver, the creation of the mould became the main problem. At first, it seemed that the richness of detail in the design, with a number of miniature frogs and other details, would make this project impossible, not least due to time constraints.

3D print technology offered a solution for this task. voxeljet partner Global TCT in England simply printed the demanding mould on the VX 500 high-performance printer. "The customer was pleased at how quickly and accurately the voxeljet machine was able to print even the smallest details such as the minuscule frog motifs on the pipe. It was even possible to map the complicated twist cap in the PMMA model, so that no further metal-cutting work was required for the cast silver part. Without 3D technology, it is unlikely that this unique gift idea would have become reality," says Kevin Smith from Global TCT. And it only took three weeks from design to the delivery of the high-gloss polished silver pipe.