Stern Design works is a creative studio that conceptualizes, builds, and sells jewelry designs focused on various interests. They’ve used Ultimaker 3D printers for prototyping and production, but at the heavy pace of production as demand for their pieces rise, their ability to produce at a high volume is limited by the need to manually paint all models which come off their machines as single color prints. Stern Design Works has now adopted Palette 2 into their miniatures workflow, allowing them to accelerate their pace of production when creating and manufacturing their products.
Stern Design Works was founded 12 years ago by Cameron and Rebecca Stern. They were driven by their intrinsic interest in the STEM and STEAM worlds. Cameron and Rebecca come from jewelry fabrication and 3D design backgrounds and create products in the form of dioramas, necklaces, earrings, and canvas pieces.
Stern uses a variety of methods to design and manufacture their jewelry: casting, 3D printing, lathing, and painting all play a role across Stern’s product line. Stern adopted Ultimaker 3D printers to create the models inside many of their dioramas. For years, Stern printed these models on Ultimaker machines and passed the finished print off to their team of dedicated painters.
These painters would then add details to the single-color model - whether it be spots on a giraffe, or fuel tanks on a space shuttle, Stern’s team would spend hours painstakingly painting different aspects of their models by hand.
Given their requirements, and their product volume, Stern’s team of painters could spend days working on a single run of one product. Stern began looking for another way to bring color into their process in a more automated way, and came across Palette 2. Palette 2 enabled Stern to implement color 3D printing, significantly reducing, and at times removing the need to post-process and paint their models upon completion.
Palette 2 has enabled Stern to section off their models, adding different colors to the main segments. This automated addition of color meant that their painters no longer have to worry about painting entire models from scratch.
Stern Design Works has been using Mosaic’s new CANVAS Paint tool to create their colored models with single-color .stl files. CANVAS Paint allows Stern to digitally paint their models within minutes and skip the tedious process of using complex modelling programs to break apart their original models. Using this free software has enabled Stern to better optimize their design workflow and create more jewelry in less time.
Want to learn more about how you can use Palette 2 in your design process? Email us at direct@mosaicmfg.com!