If OP is selling via Shapeways, it's printed and shipped by Shapeways in the user's choice of material. From the link, it looks like the only option for this one is Nylon, but that's about the strongest plastic you can get for things like gears.

Not necessarily suggesting it for this, but for anyone not used to shapeways they have a wide range of materials, with plastics of different types, metals (I have silver wedding rings I got printed there) and ceramics.

I think sellers may be able to limit the materials to known working ones (each material has it's own requirements).

> metals (I have silver wedding rings I got printed there)

was it to save money? or for some unique design?

The goal was the unique design, but they were cheap too for wedding rings. I recorded each of us saying something to the other, then took the waveforms and made a ring from each one. Printing came to about £40 for each ring.

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMECi57zKtD6arv_-sL83gp...

That's really cool, is there any way to scan it from your phone and hear it?

Thanks! I'm pretty happy with them.

> is there any way to scan it from your phone and hear it?

It's not detailed enough for that, though you can tell the cadence and reliably guess at the number of words. If you know what we said, and only we do, then you can see it.

Very nice!

If you take a look at the shapeways page OP links he mentions that the nylon material is technically not rated food grade due to it being slightly porous. This can cause particles of the food to stick in the holes. He mentions it's not much of an issue with coffee since that just means some stale coffee, however I imagine it might be more of a problem with milk. It looks like shapeways has a variety of material, however.