Catastrophic failure is many times inadvertently designed into the jewelry item. While everyone is looking to avoid failure due to material defects, one tends to overlook design problems. Even when design flaws are determined in some aspects of design, the overall integrity of a piece is often overlooked. This paper will discuss common and not so common errors unintentionally engineered into products and methods of locating and avoiding them in the future. Products discusses will include chain, rings, and earrings. A checklist approach will be presented for total product engineering to avoid ‘The Missing Link’.

Authors: Timo J. Santala, Laura L. Santala