Manufacturing system set to disrupt jewellery production

Utilising the laser melting AM process, the ORLAS CREATOR offers an economically profitable metal system with superior speed and productivity gains by way of its circular build-platform design in combination with a proprietary, rotation-led precision coater blade that will bring new value creation opportunities for jewellery brands.

During its 30 year history, 3D printing has already caused some serious disruption within the jewellery industry by facilitating new approaches to jewellery design and manufacturing. This has been achieved with new digitisation processes and the production of accurate casting patterns using wax and resin 3D printing processes. More recently, direct jewellery production has often been presented as a natural fit with metal AM processes, due to its small part sizes, high added value and limited requirements for qualification standards. However, the ubiquitous direct production of jewellery pieces in metal, particularly precious metals, has proved to be prohibitive both in terms economics and usability.

Until now when OR LASER introduced the ORLAS CREATOR at the Formnext exhibition in Frankfurt last month it presented an end to end AM solution that has been designed and developed specifically to provide access to metal 3D printing for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This includes a wide array of jewellers that now have the opportunity to engage with metal 3D printing for the direct production of customised jewellery.

OR LASER has broken down many of the existing barriers to adoption for direct jewellery production in metal, most notably the astronomical costs, complex software and usability issues and long build times.

Priced competitively, at less than half the cost of comparable machines on the market, the ORLAS CREATOR is a high-end, comprehensive AM solution that incorporates in-house developed software, innovative hardware and flexible process control. By combining these features, OR LASER has ensured that the ORLAS CREATOR is both safe and easy to operate and manage by jewellery companies. Furthermore, metal jewellery designs can be realised in as little as a few hours without the investment of time and money into casting and produced directly from CAD data. The production speeds of the ORLAS CREATOR are up to 30% faster than comparable metal 3D printing systems while part quality is facilitated by a high quality 250W fibre laser that provides exceptional beam quality and power stability. This guarantees optimum and consistent processing conditions in order to produce the highest quality jewellery pieces.