Jewellers around the world have realised the benefits of 3D printing and are implementing the technology in creative ways. From design verification to mass production, jewellery restoration and more, 3D printers can help jewellers reach a new level of excellence and efficiency.

Once upon a time, 3D printing was called “rapid prototyping.” The term now describes just one of additive manufacturing’s applications. Jewellers, too, are reaping the benefits of fast and accurate prototyping.

3D printing technologies like stereolithography (SLA) are capable of both fast print speeds and incredible detail accuracy. You can produce intricate, true-to-life prototypes to see whether your designs work before casting.

Fast prototyping can also make for happy clients. You can print demonstration models to ensure gems and stones fit perfectly and to show your designs to your clients for feedback.

Seven years ago, Tariq Riaz was an engineer. Today, he’s a jewellery designer with 16 international awards. In addition to his creative genius, part of Riaz’s success is thanks to the Formlabs Form SLA printer family.

As a newcomer to the industry, Riaz had many challenges to overcome. 3D printing has helped him learn the trade by creating accurate design prototypes that he can show to clients and use to learn how to push his art further.

“3D printing is the bread and the butter of the business. It helped me with research and development, being able to see a finished product without having to cast it in 18-carat gold. It saved me those costs in the early days when my budget was tight,” Riaz said.

One of the greatest advantages 3D printing brings to jewellers is the ability to print models directly in castable wax materials. These materials result in intricate 3D printed jewellery made of clean-burning wax for producing detailed moulds.

3D printing casting models speeds up jewellery production significantly as printers can produce ready-to-cast models in a few hours. The high repeatability and accuracy of 3D printers also reduce the chance of human error, saving time, money and nerves.

Abbas Saleh is a veteran jewellery designer and goldsmith who has worked with organisations such as Adidas and the Vienna National Art Museum. He has improved his design workflows immensely with Formlabs castable wax resins.

Saleh is now able to produce rings at a significantly faster pace than before. At the same time, he’s cut production costs down to a fifth of what they were before he turned to 3D printing.

“Printing and casting in-house is the only way for me to stay flexible as a jeweller. Traditional workflows don’t allow for last-minute iterations as on your design process you have to sketch and then create what you’ve drawn. [A Formlabs Form printer] allows me to limit the time I spend making changes to the jewellery, and saves four days each time I produce a small tree of 10-15 rings,” explained Saleh.

Conventional jewellery casting and manufacturing methods are laborious and time-consuming multi-step processes. As such, they can be difficult to scale up to large-scale mass production and may restrict your business opportunities.

3D printers can open up this bottleneck in productivity. They can produce large numbers of models and prototypes in a few hours or overnight.

In additive manufacturing, speed doesn’t necessarily compromise quality either. Printers such as 3D Systems Figure 4 and ProJet MJP 2500 are capable of incredible speeds while maintaining intricate detail.

Finnish jewellery company Narsakka struggled with production errors and unreliable quality when scaling up its production pipeline. To resolve this issue, they turned to 3D Systems ProJet MJP 2500W 3D printer.

The machine has done wonders for Narsakka’s workflow. They can now produce 60-100 wax patterns in four hours at a 100% success rate.

“It’s easier for us to calculate lead times and production cost. 3D printing basically gives us more control of our business,” said manager Thomas Narsakka.

3D printing jewellery is only one branch of the larger additive manufacturing tree. 3D scanning is another technology that can greatly help jewellery design and restoration.

With an accurate handheld 3D scanner — like Peel 2 CAD-S — you can scan existing pieces of jewellery into detailed CAD 3D models. You can then modify and repair the models before 3D printing them for reproduction or repair.

3D scanners also support traditional hand-carved jewellery sculpting. You can sculpt a piece in any material and scan it for further production and modification.