Tutorial: Designing Medal Clasps for 3D Printing

April 7, 2011

In this step-by-step tutorial by Mike Sweeney shows how to design and 3D print your own medal clasps in Carrara Studio using existing photographs as reference material.

Mike writes:

The Médaille Coloniale — the French Colonial Medal — is a prime uniform decoration for any good 19th-century soldier. Adding some campaign clasps to a recreationist friend’s medal seemed like an excellent project to test out the Shapeways workflow, from reference images to final prop.

This instructable is mostly concerned with the method(s) of working in scale from photograph to final item.

He takes you through the following steps:

• Gathering reference material and processing it in Photoshop.
• Setting up your working size in Carrara Studio.
• Designing the clasps.
• Checking if the model meets the Shapeways design rules.
• Exporting and uploading the model to Shapeways.
• Finishing the printed models.

Nice work Mike! Thanks for taking the time to post this on Instructables.com.

Link: Medal Clasps via Shapeways.