The biggest and often not calculated cost in jewelry manufactory is, without doubt, in the surface finishing. Today, jewelers are faced with finishing challenges brought by increased demand for silver, white gold and platinum. In addition, they need to decrease costs to stay competitive. This paper covers many topics, including modern, state-of-the-art finishing machines (different finishing techniques, comparison of different finishing machines, finishing machines for different uses); finishing media (explanation of the different finishing media [grinding and polishing]), physics and its influence to the surface in finishing machines, size and shape of the different media and their effects, quality [roughness] of media and its effects, and influence of different media to the surface under the magnification of an electronic microscope); and gold loss and recovery (differences of the loss between hand-finishing and machine-finishing, percentages of the loss and the possibility of recovery, different recovery methods for mass finishing wastes).

Author: Martin Moser