Manufacturing

Manufacturing is where the design stops being a design and becomes a piece that somebody has to print, cast and finish. The tab is laid out in the order the work actually happens: lay the models out, repair and lighten them, check they will survive casting, resize, sprue, and export.

The list below follows the ribbon top to bottom, group by group.

Breakdown Settings

The costing and process setup the rest of the section reads from — metals, processes and the rules used to break a piece down.

• Breakdown Settings

Import and Organize

Getting models into the file, laid out and multiplied before anything else.

• Import to Layers — bring several files in, each one onto its own layer.
• Copies — multiply a model into the number of pieces you need to cast.
• Distribute — spread the models across the build plate without overlaps.
• Quick Check — a fast pass over the selection looking for what would stop a print.

Repair and Optimize

Making the mesh printable, and making it small enough to handle.

• Automatic Repair STL — the one-click route: naked edges, non-manifold geometry and holes fixed in a pass.
  • Repair — the step-by-step repair, in the Automatic Repair submenu, for when you want to control each fix.
• Decimator by Tolerance — reduce the polygon count while staying inside a distance tolerance.
• Decimator by Percentage — reduce the polygon count by a straight percentage of the original mesh.

Analyze

Whether the piece will survive casting: thick enough, closed, sound.

• Thickness — measure wall thickness where you point.
• Show Edges — reveal naked and non-manifold edges, the usual reason an STL fails.
• Global Thickness — a thickness map of the whole piece, so thin walls surface on their own.
• Check — Rhino’s validity report on the object.

Resizing

• Ring Resizer — change a ring’s size properly, scaling the band without distorting stones and settings.

Sprues

Identify each design on the plate, then attach it to the casting tree. The commands differ in how the sprue reaches the piece — from inside, from outside, as a tree, a helix, a spiral or along a curve you draw.

• Identifier — engrave a reference on each design so it can be told apart after casting.
• Sprue Multiple Copies — sprue a whole set of copies in one operation.
• Sprue Inner Branches — branches reaching the pieces from inside the tree.
• Sprue Curve — route the sprue along a curve you draw yourself.
• Sprue Cluster Tree — a tree that clusters the pieces around the stem.
• Sprue Spiral — pieces arranged along a spiral around the stem.
• Sprue Single — one sprue for one piece.
• Sprue Inner Tree — a full tree built from the inside out.
• Sprue External Tree — branches reaching the pieces from outside.
• Sprue External Frames — external frames holding the pieces on the tree.
• Sprue Helix — pieces wrapped helically around the stem.
• Sprue Tree — the classic casting tree.

Export and Print

The end of the line: out of Rhino and into the printer’s own software.

• Preload — prepare the models for export.
• Export All in One — everything to a single file.
• Export from Layers — one file per layer, which is how most bureaus want it.
• 3D Print — send the plate straight to your printer’s software: Asiga Composer, Formlabs PreForm, Geomagic Print, Photon Workshop, B9 Captive or Elegoo Chitubox.
• STL Format — background reading rather than a command: what an STL actually contains, and what it leaves out.