The folks at dezeen — that truly know what they are talking about when it comes to design — are reporting that superstar industrial designer Ross Lovegrove is going to present a collection of six 3D printed golden rings at Design Miami this month.
According to the popular design portal, to create his “Foliates Collection” Lovegrove implemented both direct metal sintering (DMS) and lost-wax casting from a 3D printed wax prototype. DMS is becoming more popular among metal artisans and designers even though it remains quite difficult to implement with precious elements such as gold, mainly due to the high costs of having a repository of unused gold powder (which, if you have been following the financial news, has been collapsing in value lately) always at hand, next to a printer that will already run into the tens if not hundreds of thousands (of dollars/pounds/euro)
It is not clear which part of the rings have been DMS’d and which were created by developing a cast around a 3D printed wax model, in which the molten gold is inserted once the wax is removed. What we do know is that Lovegrove will produce only ten pieces of each ring model and that he will show them at the Louisa Guinness Gallery in sunny Miami. More or less at the same time as the entire 3D printing industry will be meeting up at Frankfurt’s Euromold.
Expressing himself in the picturesque way that seems to have become a trademark for top-of-the-food-chain designers, Lovegrove explained to dezeen that: “They [the rings] sit lightly, exploring the dynamics of space and the digital realm, converging organic design with the nature of naturalness that underlines my life’s commitment to sourcing the trinity that can exist so succinctly when technology, materials and form converge in the advanced times in which we live.”
Source: dezeen
