"3D printed" describes a category of machines, not a material — roughly the way "baked" describes bread and pottery equally. Three quite different processes get sold under the phrase, and a buyer comparing two listings is often comparing things with almost nothing in common.
Here is what separates them.
The desktop machine most people picture. A spool of plastic thread is melted and laid down in lines, one layer on top of the last.
It is inexpensive and widely available, and it is what a great many marketplace listings are made with. It also has characteristic limits: visible layer lines you can feel, comparatively weak bonding between layers, and the need for support structures wherever the geometry overhangs — which leave marks where they're broken away.
A piece is usually printed in a single color of plastic, so color and material are the same decision.
A vat of liquid photopolymer cured selectively by light. Detail is superb — genuinely finer than sintering — which is why resin is the standard for printing casting patterns in the jewelry trade.
As a finished wearable material it is more limited. Cured resin tends to be harder and more brittle than nylon, so a thin element is more likely to snap than flex. Many resins also yellow or become more brittle with prolonged UV exposure. Supports are required here too, and they leave witness marks.
Much of what is sold as resin jewelry is a pattern printed, then cast in metal — which is a different product again from a worn resin piece.
What the pieces on this site are made with.
A laser fuses fine nylon powder layer by layer inside a heated chamber. The unfused powder surrounds the piece as it forms and supports it, which means no support structures at all — no witness marks, and no geometry ruled out for being unreachable. Hollow interiors, enclosed voids, elements printed already interlocked.
The material is tough rather than brittle: it flexes under impact and returns. The surface is uniformly matte with no layer lines to the touch. Color comes from dyeing after printing, so the same form can exist in any number of colors without reprinting anything.
The catch is access. An SLS machine is an industrial installation, not a studio tool. Printing happens at a specialist bureau, which is why FDM is far more common among makers and why sintered pieces cost more.
Two listings can both say "3D printed earrings" and describe a $12 filament piece with visible layer lines and a $200 sintered piece with a geometry that could not be manufactured any other way.
The questions worth asking: what is it made of, and does it need supports? An honest seller will tell you. If a listing says only "3D printed", it is usually FDM.
See how these pieces are made, or the 3D printed collection.
All of these are collected on the 3D printed jewelry page.
