Introduction
Two techniques have historically defined jewelry making: handcrafting and lost-wax casting. Both techniques require significant technical expertise, are highly time-intensive, and mistakes in the process can prove expensive.But today, digital design and 3D printing are primed to disrupt these age-old practices in a major way. Supplementing traditional processes with digital techniques brings new possibilities in design and production to jewelers, as well as exciting new customization options for customers.
Customized jewelry
Until now, the complexity of the design and production process made customized jewelry an expensive privilege. With digital tools, however, jewelers have already started offering personalized creations as part of their basic service or as a value add. If you go to a jeweler today and ask for an engagement ring, often you’ll have the option to customize a unique design.
Jeweller and customer can discuss the design together, and an hour later, the customer can hold and try on a real, physical model of the ring. In jewelry retail, on-site digital design combined with the speed of 3D printing has drastically shortened the feedback loop between designer and customer.
Moving from design to production is easier and faster, as hand carving a precious one-off is no longer a requirement. The try-on pieces can be tailored based on the customer’s requests, 3D printed again, and then manufactured with lost-wax casting, which translates to a considerable reduction in the cost of making customized 3D printed jewelry.
Flexible design
With 3D printing, jewelry designers are able to produce designs that would be incredibly difficult to hand carve in the traditional manner. Breakthroughs in castable resins are setting new standards for the quality available through an affordable desktop 3D printer.
3D printing jewelry patterns in Formlabs’ Castable Wax 40 Resin combines the smooth surface finish characteristic of stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing technology with precise print settings. Thanks to a precisely controlled laser, extraordinary design details—delicate filigrees, raised text, and detailed pavé stone settings—can be captured with amazing sharpness.
Higher production speed
Digital tools are not only making jewelry easier to customize, but also simpler to mass-produce designs.Vulcanized rubber molds are used to produce wax patterns in quantity for lost-wax casting, but the “master” pattern is traditionally made from an investment cast, hand-carved wax pattern. 3D printers can produce master models that are used to form room temperature vulcanization (RTV) molds and even durable high temperature vulcanized rubber molds.
producing 3D printed jewelry
The first step is 3D modeling. It can be easier than you think as there are special software dedicated just for jewelry design. Choose the best one for your project with our top 11 of the best jewelry design software. However, if you would like to start by taking baby steps in the virtual world, check out the easiest 3D modeling software of 2019.
It might so happen that you’re very serious about starting your own jewelry business. There are numerous benefits of that and to make it easier for you, we prepared 5 easy steps to start a jewelry business.
The Future of the Jewelry Industry
Owing to the formerly high cost of large-scale 3D printing and the perceived barrier-to-entry of digital jewelry design, 3D printed jewelry, despite its potential, currently represents a relatively small fraction of the market.Nevertheless, with increasingly easy to use and accessible 3D printing technologies, the 3D printed jewelry market is poised for growth.
New, easy-to-use materials like Castable Wax 40 Resin are easing the learning curve, leading to greater adoption of the workflow and the subsequent expansion of the market.
Leopard is a jewelry manufacturer in Switzerland, Canada, and America. Contact our experts to order your desired jewelry for any memorable event and receive the most beautiful design and best quality jewelry.