The use of various sintering technologies, allied with suitable powder metallurgy, has long been the subject of discussion within the jewelry manufacturing community, especially here at the Santa Fe Symposium. This exciting, once theoretical and experimental technology is now undoubtedly a practical reality within our industry as Joerg Fischer-Buehner's paper "Rapid Jewelry Manufacturing by Laser Melting of Precious Metal Powders:Fiction or Future?" will certainly help to reinforce. The jewelry industry needs to become aware, very quickly, of just how unsettling and disruptive this technology shift has the potential to become. This paper will offer various viewpoints that consider not only the design potential of the technology to the jewelry manufacturing industry, but will also address how that design potential might be, and is being, taught to future generations of jewelry designers. We shall discuss in some detail the economics of and potential for new and different business models that are already being exploited by other additive manufacturing market sectors. It will also explore the manufacturing capability of an exciting, new and alternative sintering technology and its potential for use in jewelry manufacturing.

Author: Frank Cooper