NFC Enabled Smart Ring with Tritium and Forged Carbon Fiber

To make this one of a kind ring, I used 5 different ingredients. To start out with the base of the ring, I used a proprietary blend of forged carbon fiber, that I got from the CEO, John Paul, of Carbon 6 Rings. One thing that is so great about forged carbon fiber is all the layers are blended together, so it is not likely to crack or split while I am cutting into it. I wanted to make this ring look like a tech/cyborg ring, so I wanted to add as much glow as I could to the design. I decided to add tritium vials and glow powder to give this ring the glow I wanted. To make this ring look even more techy, I also wanted to add in some circuit boards components as well as a working NFC chip. This ring allows you to perform a bunch of really useful functions with your smartphone, so this is definitely one of the most functional rings I have ever made. This ring would be perfect for anyone in your life that loves tech gear and wants something not only completely unique, but functional.

The Process:

I started this process off by cutting out a blank from the forged carbon fiber and filing down the outside and inside of the blank. After this, I needed to carve a groove out of the center of the ring that was just wide enough to fit the NFC chip. After carving out the groove, I was ready to glue the NFC chip in place and cover it with CA adhesive.

It was now time for me to add it the circuit board chips. I wanted to arrange the chips in a way that made them look functional, even though they were just for show. To keep this organized look, I placed the chips into a grid pattern.

I then added glow powder into all of the cracks by using my fingers, a damp paper towel, and tweezers. After I had the glow powder where I wanted it, I added a bunch of CA adhesive all over the ring to hold everything in place permanently and provided a clear protective layer over the ring. My next step was to add the tritium vials, and to do this I needed to carve out a space on both sides of the NFC chip that would fit the vials securely. The reason I decided to do this after applying the CA adhesive, was to keep the glow powder in place and give the ring a clean and finished look. After adding in the tritium vials I added CA adhesive to the help keep the vials from shattering.

Now all I had left to do was sand everything flush and polish it up. I needed to add bevels to the ring, but because carbon fiber is a softer material, I decided to use a high grit sandpaper and the dremel to put the bevels into place. I then needed to size up the ring and to do that, I used the rough dremel wheel. Now that I had it to size, I smoothed it all out to make it look good and fit comfortably. To polish up the inside, I used a bit of compound on a paper towel which made it nice and shiny. I then moved over to my buffing wheel to shine up the outside of the ring. After shining up the ring, the ring was finished!

What can the NFC do?

There are a lot of really cool things you could now program this NFC chip to do. Some of those things are, turning up the brightness on your screen by putting your ring to the back of your phone, sending someone your contact information by tapping the back of their phone with the ring, programming a certain web page to pop up when you put the ring next to your phone, and much more!