Additive Manufacturing in Jewellery Design

Additive manufacturing has become a well-known and widely used process among engineers and designers within the past decade to respond to high levels of market demand and product complexity. The jewellery industry still works essentially on traditional fabrication methods to much time consuming and in some cases lacking efficiency compared to the quality of the end product. The inclusion of new technologies can be a solution to overcome these issues. Additive fabrication enables the fabrication of new products and geometries reducing manufacturing time, energy and labor costs. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of traditional manufacturing processes, such as Investment Casting, and proposes a new production method based on the use of advanced modeling and additive manufacturing. Three additive manufacturing technologies were used, such as selective laser sintering, stereolithography and 3D printing. A computational application for jewellery design is also presented to help manufactures and customers to fabricate novel jewellery pieces. This tool is based on a customization concept, which has been of increasing interest during recent years.