A roundup of the top 3D printing news from March 4 to March 10:

Tuesday, March 5

• 3D Printing Drugs: Medical Miracle or Illegal Substance Enabler?

3D printing marketplace Shapeways has introduced premium silver material for creating fine jewelry and other long-lasting items.

From the Shapeways blog:

Premium Silver is our 3D printed Sterling Silver taken to the next level with an incredibly smooth, glossy surface to give your designs a truly professional finish. We will be offering Premium Silver for a six week trial until Tuesday May the 14th, during which we will assess the pricing and design rules. If you love this new finish as much as we already do, we will keep it as a permanent material option on Shapeways.

Finished 3D prints are hand polished to give them that professional look.

During the trial, premium silver will be priced as follows:

• Handling Fee Per Model:  $45 (up to 1.7 cm³), $78 (1.7 – 3.4 cm³),  Free (above 3.4 cm³)
• Price Per cm³: $28 (up to 3.4 cm³),  $75 (above 3.4 cm³)

This means:

• 1.0 cm3 item will cost $73.00
• 1.7 cm3 item will cost $92.60
• 1.8 cm3 item will cost $128.40
• 3.4 cm3 item wil cost $173.20
• 3.5 cm3 item will cost $262.50

More details at Shapeways.

From Madonna to Katy Perry to the Duchess of Cambridge Princess Kate, celebrities are wearing cross pendant necklaces of all different shapes and designs. The trend is hot and there are many to buy online, but what if you wanted to design your own? Now you can.

The Variable Cross is a pendant that you can customize through a webpage in 3D. The website uses brand new WebGL technology (works best in Chrome). Once you create your design, it is 3D printed in sterling silver. This is the service first to offer you the tools to create your own jewelry in precious metals using 3D printing. And all without needing any special skills.

Go to the website to try it yourself: http://cross.shapewright.com

The Variable Cross was created by an artist who calls himself macouno. Here’s his bio.

I’m an artist, who has been working with new/3D technology for well over a decade. Find out more about me and my work at http://www.macouno.com. The last couple of years I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation with 3D print and related developments. Most notably perhaps the Entoforms (http://www.entoforms.com).

Imagine you could print a thin layer of micro-electronics on any surface. With 3D printing, this is now a reality – reports the Economist – and that makes any surface a smart surface.

It’s not traditional copper, but rather micro-building blocks of silver.

Silver is a better conductor of electricity than copper, which is typically used in circuits, but silver is expensive and tricky to print because it melts at 962°C. However, by making silver into particles just five nanometres (billionths of a metre) in size, Xerox has produced a silver ink which melts at less than 140°C. That allows it to be printed using inkjet and other processes relatively cheaply, says Paul Smith, the director of research at the laboratory. Only minuscule quantities of silver are used and there is no waste, unlike chemical-etching processes.

Xerox’s PARC research centre in Palo Alto, California, is developing ways to use such inks. These can print circuits for various components, including flexible display screens, sensors and antennae for radio-frequency security tags. With the emergence of additive-manufacturing techniques, it starts to become possible to print such things directly onto the product itself, says Janos Veres, the manager of PARC’s printed-electronics team.

So how difficult would it be to print a phone complete with all its electronic gubbins? Optomec is developing applications which could provide some of the necessary steps. Besides antennae these include edge circuits for the screen, three-dimensional connections for chips, multiple-layer circuits and touch-screen parts. It would also be possible to print the battery. The biggest challenge would be to print the chips that are the brains of the phone. These contain millions of transistors in a square millimetre and are at present made in silicon-fabrication plants costing $10 billion or more. Yet embedding even some circuitry means phones could be made slimmer, as well as reducing the costs of materials and assembly.

The impact of this research is astounding. Now any glass surface can become a phone, planes can have intelligent electronics on their wings, and fish tanks can observe and adjust the water temperature.

Read the full story at the Economist.

Foxconn construction photo by Bert van Dijk used under Creative Commons license.

A roundup of the top news On 3D Printing brought you from June 25 to July 1.

Monday, June 25

• Will Apple Make a Big Acquisition to Enter the 3D Printing Market?
• $300 3D Printer Printxel Shows at the Kansas City Maker Faire

Tuesday, June 26

• 3D Printing Will Empower Most Innovative Decade in History – Forbes

Wednesday, June 27

• Broadway Shows Get New Mojo with 3D Printed Set Design
• Exclusive: Cubify by 3D Systems Prints at Google I/O and Launches API

Thursday, June 28

• Micro 3D Printing: How Small Can You Go? Shapeways Shows Us

Friday, June 29

• Autodesk Shows off 123D Catch Software and 3D Printing at Google I/O
• 3D Systems Announces “Smarter 3D Printing” Seminars for Entrepreneurs