Going Thinner and Thinner: When Jewelry Needs Weight Watchers®!

Jewellery industry, as many other industrial fields, has to face a market at a crisis point, in which precious metals price keep rising. The production of difficult-to-copy and unique designs, filigree pattern and hollow parts seems to be the accepted in order to innovate. Where is the breaking point between virtual design and practical realization of objects? How thin we can cast? Several parameters must be considered to answer to the aforementioned questions, from model production to finishing, in order to understand the thickness limits of a cast part. Issues related to prototyping, casting and polishing must be considered as well as the wearability of the component and its durability. The paper presents a study on different thin filigree objects, in order to evaluate the technological limits of both pattern production and object castability.