Final Project – parametric jewelry

My inspiration for this project came from a hobby I picked up during covid. I had always liked crafting, and so one day while hanging around my house I found out about making rings out of wires.

I thought it would be interesting to explore what sort of jewelry I could make in Rhino/Grasshopper, and if I could make those parametrically. I ended up with results different from the original wire ring designs, and more interesting band designs. I started by making a simple ring that can be curved into different spirals, and has a top and bottom width that can be increased. I wanted this one to look like more organic metal, and seem like it could almost be handmade. (I have to figure out different shaders for them, they look flat right now).

The next design I went for was more of a geometric band. This one can also be resized and can change the amount of shapes on the ring.

Elevator pitch

I made my project because I wanted to have a way to make rings for myself, and have a easy time designing them. My project is meant to focus on rings rather than other jewelry types, while using parametric modeling to make the designing aspect of making jewelry easier. With different types of ring designed to choose from, I can 3d print the ones I like the most.

Functionality

My program is pretty easy to use. Right now there are only 3 different types of rings to choose from (will be more) and those places to adjust the rings are labeled in the code like this:

I showed a couple of the outputs above, but when you change these values you can customize the ring designs based on factors like number of segments in the geometric ring and how many times it loops around in the organic ring, how big you want the ring, and other factors like that.

Next steps

I am in the middle of making my third ring design, which meant to hold a jewel, I am right now trying to work out how to give dimension to the basic outline.

My next immediate step would be to 3d print a couple models that I have made already to figure out sizing and see how they look when fabricated. I am planning on using filament that looks like metal.

I am still wanting to make a ring design where there are 2 thick bands connected with random shapes in the middle. Also maybe a ring where there are jewels thats that can be attached after

Final Project Demo

For my project, I wanted to create a couple of algorithms that helped in creating different types of rings. I ended up with 3 different groups of code, each one producing unique rings that can be scaled to ring size. I ended up fabricating 8 different rings through 3D printing with metallic filament, 3 versions of the first and second code, and 2 from the 3rd.