An Overview of Custom Jewelry Designs
Custom jewelry design is the designing of jewelry by the wearer. Custom jewelry designs have been used since the 1800s. Several techniques are used to make these jewels. Most of the techniques are adaptations of older techniques. Some of the greatest advantages of custom jewelry designs are the fact that the jewelry you get is unique, the jewelry you get is guaranteed to fit you, you get to choose the materials to use and to control the price of the jewelry, you will be happier with the final product because it will be made according to your specifications and it will go well with your wardrobe, and these jewels make for great gifts.
There is however a trend towards the use of technology in the generation of custom jewelry designs. CAD or computer aided design and computer aided manufacture have revolutionized custom jewelry designing. The creation of computer rendering is important because you are then able to make changes if there is something you do not like. This saves the jeweler a lot of money and the making of jewelry is faster.
The most common method of manufacturing custom jewels is lost wax casting. This is an old process that involves the use of small knives and scalpels to make incision cutouts of the jewelry to be made from wax. The replica (model) is then poured into a flask and is then filled with plaster, a process that is popularly referred to as investment. This is allowed to dry and after the hardening, the model will have the exact shape of the intended jewelry. The model crater of the jewelry is filled with the molten metal through the flask through vacuum casting. The metal is allowed to harden and to cool and the plaster is then broken to reveal the unfinished jewelry casting. Finishing is done through the filing and the culturing of the jewelry. The final part of the manufacturing process is the assembling of the jewelry through the setting of the gemstone/s or the setting of other metal parts.
With the newer computer aided manufacturing method, the custom jewelry designs generated by the CAD software are fed into a replica machine that is known as a CNC mill. This machine works by removing lumps from the wax to create the model of the jewelry, the same work that an expert does in lost wax casting. This means the models are more accurate and precise.
