I wasn't sure what would come out of my little experiment with titanium and Icelandic beach pearl - but despite some setbacks the Reynisfjöruperla Hengiskraut is complete!
The pendant is made from 3D printed titanium and was manufactured for me by the good folks at i.materialise. Originally I wanted the Reynisfjöruperla - a beach pearl from Reynisfjara Beach - to float in a titanium embrace. You'll remember from my previous entry on this project that the pendant snapped when I attempted to mount the pearl.
After it snapped I contacted Dmitriy at i.materialise to see if 3d printed titanium was by nature brittle and if there was any way to design around that property - such as taking account of any anisotropic properties of the metal. He noted that the pendant might be slightly less strong in the direction perpendicular to the Z axis (though he doubted that was the case with my model). After checking, the titanium team concluded that it's possible to break a 4-5 mm thick titanium part with basic tools and manual force! The grooves on the model made it around 3 mm thick in certain areas which could have amplified the force I applied thus making the part break more easily than otherwise.
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- Testing the fit of the drilled hole.
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- Left side of the pendant (and my glamorous left foot!)
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- My little setup. Note epoxy top left.
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- Powder from drilling to be mixed with epoxy.
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- Black powder epoxy.
Once I fit the metal pieces back together and decided on the placement of the Reynisfjöruperla, I mixed some two part epoxy with some of the drilling powder. After assembly it was time to wait.
Here is what it looked like after a couple of hours - well after a little bit of polishing, too.
A good guess Jérémy ?
It actually would be Reynisfjöruperla (singular = pearl) or Reynisfjöruperlur (plural = pearls).
Icelandic can be a bit tricky ?.— Benni R (@benediktr) October 23, 2018
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