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Just
a brief note about myself and my work. I am a dyed in the wool geek
who just happened to find that making jewelry is a passion.
I
create my jewelry to fit the stone that I have found. I tend to choose
more unusual stones and all the stones that I use are natural.
Being the Geek I am, I of
course had to find a way to incorporate high tech with making jewelry.
I found that Matrix 3D CAD/CAM software from
GemVision and a wax grow machine
from
SolidScape, fulfilled that
desire. I am currently able to take the .3dm files from Matrix or other
CAD/CAM software and create those designs in wax using my PatternMaster
stereolithography rapid prototype machine. The models can be
directly cast and are ready for molds. This method of creating models
is called "growing", as it literally grows the model one layer at a time,
much like a cat scan shows one layer at a time of the human body. The
model is created using wax jets that work similar to an ink jet printer.
Growing a model gives the designer more flexibility than milling does.
Milling does not lend itself well to undercuts and the fine detail that some
jewelry designs demand. The biggest drawback of growing is that it is
a slower process than milling and the turnaround time is a bit longer.
You can
read about the different types of model creation in this article, which even
though it is quite old, does explain the technology quite well.
http://www.lapidaryjournal.com/feature/jul01str.cfm
Please select the New links link to find out more about my model services.
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