I've been working on some tritium rings, over the last six months or so.
It started with Ring III, an unwearable lump, designed to be printed in silver and hold 18 2×8mm vials. The band is 4mm thick and 12mm tall.
I never took it past the initial prototype stage for obvious reasons. Sections of carbon fibre rod were used as placeholders for the vials.
This evolved into the Ring VI, which uses the smaller and more available 2×6mm vials, a theme continued through all my later ring designs.
The ring is printed in silver and with a band that's only 2mm thick and 10mm tall, it's a much more wearable item.
However, the problem with using tritium and to an even greater extent screws is that they can't be scaled up and down easily. The last two rings have an internal diameter of 23mm, or a US 14 ring size, which is much larger than an average person would want. Scale the ring down so that it is a US size 8 or 9 and the relative sizes of the vials and screws would dominate the design, or not be able to fit at all. So I set about designing a simpler and more easily scalable ring, made as a single piece, which became Ring IX
For this ring, the vials are installed from the front then set and protected by a thick layer of Norland 61 adhesive. The ring above offers very little protection to the vials which was always a concern. This was also printed in silver.
This was also my first ring, designed to reflect as much of the vial's light as possible, out of the front of the ring.
After getting some feedback on the deign, I reduced the height and thickness of the ring's band further.
While designing the ring above, I played around with alternative designs and different ways of mounting the vials.
The next two rings have their vials installed from the top and both have added protection for the vials while not requiring to be potted like Ring IX.
Ring X has vertical bars, which protect the vials from impact while allowing as much view of the vials and their reflections as possible from multiple angles. Printed in silver.
Ring XI is my latest tritium ring, with a horizontal, vial protection bar, which adds more surfaces for the vial's light to reflect off. This one's printed in titanium.
