This is my first time to try 3D, hence I need your precious inputs. I am in the process of making a prototype for a fashion belt buckle. The actual belt buckle will be made of titanium (black, bronze and gray/silver.
Few things I need help on
1. What material to use to have that smooth finish so the prototype will be ready for sample presentation or is there additional process to achieve this?
2. What material to use that is strong but not costly? I checked using titanium material and the cost is not feasible for our budget.
For accuracy, precision and smooth surface combined, the Polyjet technology is the best technology yet. The strength you are mentioning should’ve accompanied by some technical requirement to be able to say if anything in plastic will suit you need. An option for a metal prototype is making a sand mold for casting using a plastic printed prototype to do the cavities in the sand.
Strong enough to be the actual belt buckle. We will be using the 3D belt buckle for our marketing ads and presentation, hence it should look like the actual one. Not necessarily metal, if there is a cheaper metal that I can use why not, otherwise other material should be enough.
I second what @plvcpt has said about casting. It will be a much more economical way to get a metal prototype than trying to print in actual metal will be (that process is called DMLS by the way). Something as simple as a belt buckle should be no issue for a caster local to you to do, and all you need is a decent plastic print to make the mold from.
If you choose this route, I would suggest having the print done using either Polyjet or SLA. Both produce nice surface finishes and will require minimal amounts of post-processing before casting.
First of all, all 3D printing is composed of layers (either of deposited or sintered material, for the most part) so smooth layer transitions will always be a matter of perspective. - The cheapest and probably one of the easier ways to go about this is to get the part printed by a high quality FDM machine, that can do at least 100 micron layers and is well calibrated; and then going ahead and sanding the finished part (or using something like XTC-3D to smooth out the layers… and then sanding it down, more than likely.)
As far as materials go, on the FDM (FFF) side you have a ton of options, including expensive metal-filled and carbonfiber filled materials, but for a belt buckle, especially a proof of concept model, I doubt you will need that. PLA might be a bit on the fragile side, as it doesn’t like to bend, but well printed PETG is really strong stuff, and of course there is the classic option of ABS (which does give off noxious fumes, so hopefully people won’t be printing it in the house.)
Another option would be to go the route of SLA (DLP) which is laser cured resin. This will give you an initially smoother piece, though the resin printing process needs a lot more clean-up, post-processing and treatment to give you a finished product. SLA printers are also not as common, the material and running costs are higher… In short, this method is more expensive and probably won’t give you any different a result in something like a belt buckle than FDM printing would.
