It had been years since many jewellers start using 3D printing in the jewellery industries quietly. Many of our focuses had put on other industries such as medical, aerospace, manufacturing and many more.
Are you one of them who had started using 3D printing for your jewellery? If you are not, no worries, we are going to share with you the advantages for your considering for the future.
1. Shortening the manufacturing process
Using the traditional casting process, jewellery designers will hand-carve the original pattern in wax followed by placing the wax pattern in a mold to be burned out. To create the cast piece, melted metals like the gold and silver will pour into the mold cavity. Upon getting the cast piece, designers will polish the cast piece to the type of finishing of the end product.
Using 3D printing, jewellery designers make use of CAD software (eg. Matrix) to create their jewellery design digitally and 3D printed out their patterns using 3D printer that can be used for casting direct to create the mold. The after process of creating the cast piece will be the same as the traditional casting process.
The benefit of using 3D printing is the great time-reduction from designing process to produce the patterns.
2. Personalization makes easy
With no minimum order of quantity, you can start offering bespoke personalize creations as part of your unique value add to your customers using digital tools for designing and 3D printing to either direct 3D printing them in plastic/metal or create the wax patterns for casting.
3. Design Freedom
With the help of 3D printing, you can create complex designs on your jewellery using designing software that is difficult to hand-carved in the traditional methods. With the advanced 3D printing technology, you can 3D print complex jewellery using castable resins, master pattern material or print in wax from 3D Systems used on ProJet MJP 2500.
4. Materials & Finishing
You can direct 3D print your jewellery in metals such as Brass, Bronze or Silver with different plating options on the finishing.
Alternatively, you can also 3D print using castable resins (eg. Figure 4 JCAST-GRN 10), master pattern material (eg. Figure 4 JEWEL MASTER GRY), print in wax (eg. VisiJet M2 Cast from 3D Systems used on ProJet MJP 2500) or print in nylon using the SLS Technology.
5. Light Weight Design
The beauty of 3D printing is you can control how you would like your design to be printed out. You can print in 100% fill for strong and heavier feel; if you want it to be lighter, you can try 80% fill or lesser depending on the requirement. You can also design your jewellery with lattices structures.
Read more on the process difference using Traditional Casting Process and 3D Printing for Jewellery