Handmade rings are romantic, and beautiful. For jewellers, they are a type of functional art. Even the plainest metal bands are inherently special, perhaps not in form, but at least in their purpose. After all, they are a symbol of enduring love.Until recently, these rings were made exclusively by hand. Machines are still used to facilitate metalwork and fabrication, but the design, the detail, the polishing – all done by hand in most cases. But this has a limitation, and that is the human hand can’t do complexity. Yes, it can do beautiful, but complex, customized jewelers it cannot. At least, not without great effort, and at a great price.
This is because, with traditional lost-wax casting, the jeweler hand-carves the original pattern in wax. This takes considerable time and expertise. 3D printing is changing that. No more is the design and production process that makes customized jeweler an expensive privilege. 3D printing enables jewelers to conceptualise and prototype rings quickly. While a customer waits, digital tools can be used to personalize creations. 3D printers can manufacture dimensionally accurate wax casts, which when processed, result in retail-grade final pieces. It’s safe to say that 3D printing is disrupting the jewelers industry. Its potential is being witnessed by small, independent jewelers and large houses alike, and there are a number of ways this is transpiring.
Customized jewelers
Among the sea of rings on show in high-street jeweler’s stores – many of which are carbon copies of each other – there has been a boom in the number of people wanting customized jewelers. And we’re not just talking inscriptions – we’re talking bespoke jewelers that are completely unique. Until now, this was an expensive privilege. It was also a time-consuming one, with a workflow spanning at least several weeks. The jeweler would have to draw the design by hand or digitally, if necessary. They would then hand carve the original pattern in wax. Most of the time, a prototype would come first.
With digital tools like CAD, jewelers no longer have to rely on hand carving to create custom jewelry for their clients. How? Because it’s possible to 3D print any designs drawn in CAD from a castable resin using a printer like the Form labs Form 3. Breakthroughs in castable photopolymer resins are setting new standards for the quality available, with Form labs leading the way.
3D printing enables jewelers to utilize tricky overhangs and complex geometries and shapes that would be otherwise impossible to create by hand. It should be said that this isn’t possible with a fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printer. It’s only possible with printers that print resin. SLA (stereolithography) is the most popular enabler. The Form 2 and Form 3 (read our Form 3 guide) are great examples of printers that have found success in the industry thus far. They can capture extraordinary design details and fabricate models in a matter of hours. Most prints take less than a day.
Customer experience
While beautiful jewelers can attract a buyer into a store, it is the experience the buyer receives that defines the jeweler, and 3D printing is enabling jewellers to improve customer experience in a variety of ways.
Firstly, the jeweller and customer can discuss the design together, and in just a few hours, the customer can have a 3D printed prototype of that design to try on. This immersive, personal experience is unique to 3D printing. Secondly, the process from design to production is a lot faster. Traditionally, the process takes several weeks, and with some prestigious jewellers, several months. 3D printing has dramatically shortened this time. It’s perfectly possible for jewellers to design and print, cast and finish rings within the space of one to two weeks. Customers can also have confidence in their ideas coming alive. For too long, prospective customers have been told ‘no’ by jewellers who do not have the capability to create by hand what their customer asks for. 3D printing allows more complex designs to be created, allowing a wider range of customers to be satisfied.
Small and large series production
3D printing can just as easily be applied to small series and even mass production. This is achievable by using vulcanized rubber moulds, which can produce wax patterns that were originally 3D printed in quantity.“With the quality that you can get with SLA and Formlabs technology for printing these jewellery pieces, you can jump straight from the 3D printed part to a master mould,” said Formlabs’ Jewellery Vertical Product Manager Amos Dudley. The surface finish is already so smooth that minimal finishing is required. You can use that as the rubber mould for creating the final wax parts that go into production.”
Jewellers can use this process to create a series of 5 or 10 rings at a time, to keep in store during the season. It means they can offer both truly bespoke and exclusive designs, catering to every budget (more would be charged for a truly bespoke ring, and less for one of the house-exclusive rings made in production).
Naturally, this is giving small jewellery houses and independent jewellers a competitive advantage. The ability to design and 3D print prototypes in a matter of hours and transform them into physical models within a day is revolutionary to workflow. The traditional design and production process seems so old fashioned in comparison. This is why many are calling 3D printing a true industry disruptor
The technological development of SLA 3D printing is a technological change that subverts the traditional production logic. Change the traditional subtractive manufacturing of cutting, grinding and engraving materials , and adopt the “bottom-up” material superposition and lamination integrated additive manufacturing. From raw materials to finished products, SLA 3D printing technology eliminates the manufacturing process for raw materials, and can manufacture very complex and fine structures. The SLA series 3D printers developed and produced by sp3D can quickly help various industries shorten the product development cycle and accelerate the speed of new products to market.
Especially for the jewelry industry, the use of the series of SLA 3D printers developed and produced by our company can get rid of the traditional planning processing and time constraints such as plate-making, gluing molds, and glue-opening molds. Import the designed conceptual product model into the printer to get a complete physical model within a few hours. After confirmation, it can be sent to the manufacturer for production, which greatly speeds up the new product iteration efficiency and increases the brand’s competitive advantage.
The core laser scanning components of our series of SLA 3D printers use galvanometers imported from Germany. The lasers are independently developed by our company with specific wavelengths. The large-format equipment has variable spot technology. The scanning speed reaches 6000mm/s to 10000mm/s, and the printing accuracy is 0.05 to 02mm range, and the printing process is stable, and the finished-product rate is over 98%. It can print a complete high-precision concept jewelry entity within a few hours, reshape the data model on the computer, and provide technical support for printing concept jewelry model samples. Using technical methods to help jewelry designers to achieve creative freedom without the concerns of sample processing, the real WYSIWYG.
At the same time, SLA 3D printing technology eliminates the traditional process, which provides a good opportunity for the jewelry industry to achieve personalization and customization. Consumers can directly participate in the design and implementation of jewelry models in the early stage, independently transform creativity into physical models, and give unique meanings and connotations to the models. Immersive experiences increase consumers’ trust and goodwill towards brands. Even a one-to-one customized business model can be established to achieve precise marketing.
The development of SLA 3D printing technology has greatly shortened the sample development cycle of the jewelry industry and provided an opportunity for a new business development model has been committed to researching SLA 3D printing technology for many years, constantly developing and iterating new SLA 3D printing prototypes, from pre-production manufacturing to post-terminal sales, helping more jewelry companies to complete the manufacturing transformation of new product design and development. At the same time, it provides a new way of thinking for the future large-scale production and personalized customization service.
