The 4 Cs of CAD Jewelry: Complexity, Creativity, Craftsmanship, Challenge
The art of creating beautiful custom CAD jewelry is inspired by many talents and skills including creativity, technique, experience, craftsmanship, technological know-how, and even emotion. So that you can better see how all of these qualities figure into CAD jewelry, we’ve written a post to show you some of the stages of development of a beautiful custom CAD jewelry model, from conceptual birth to finish.
The Beginning
As with any jewelry piece, we start with just an idea, which is either a 2D sketch, a photo, or even a technical drawing. In the photo below, for example, you see a custom design that was transformed straight from the creative mind of our resident CAD expert, Aron Suley into a technical drawing.
Technical drawing
Moving into a Virtual World
From here, the jewelry vision is then created in a virtual world using CAD software.
Inspiration and Challenges
The inspiration behind this particular design came from a two-tone ametrine, a naturally occurring variety of quartz that is a mix between citrine and amethyst with yellow and purple zones. The two-tone color of the ametrine inspired Aron to create a ring that was also in two colors – yellow and white gold. As you can see from the drawing, the inspired design was very complex, which gave rise to several challenges. The first challenge was to have the stonecutter cut the stone so that it was half yellow and half purple.
The second challenge was creating the type of two-tone ring that Aron had in mind, as his vision was not just a two-tone ring that featured a bezel setting in yellow gold and a band in white gold. Rather, Aron decided to make the ring much more beautiful and unique by creating a shank with a ‘lining’ of white gold between two outer layers of yellow gold. This idea was not only unique, but also had the bonus effect of making the shank appear to be much thicker than it actually is. The different colored layers also helped make the little L-shaped designs in the shank more prominent. These L shapes, by-the-way, are not random! The letter ‘L’ is actually an initial of the customer who requested this custom model!
The major challenge with this ring, however, was in the casting – as the wall thickness was only .4mm, which is almost unheard of in jewelry design. Since this made for a rather frail construction, Aron had to include a very complex and elaborate set of sprues that could successfully feed such an extremely thin shank. Normally, one sprue would be enough, but this ring required about 40! You can see the level of complexity in the photo below:
Starting the Transformation
Once the CAD was perfected, the file was ready to be printed on a 3D rapid prototype printer and then cast.
The wax was then melted off so we were left with just the mold, which was then filled with the metal of choice to produce the final piece.
Lastly, the finishing touches were applied – polishing, setting the desired stones, and polishing again – craftsmanship at its best!
Transformation Complete (Where we hear a lot of oohs and aahs)
And Voila! Another work of art created and another happy customer! As you can see, there is absolutely nothing factory produced about this model!
This is how to get fine custom jewelry – how we at Jewelrythis will create a dream out of your vision.
White and yellow gold fashion ring with two-tone ametrine.
