Let's talk about...Jewellery

Since I finally have photo of my laser engraved ring, I can finally talk about laser technology introductory tasks I had during the first week of the project. I won't talk about laser scanning, cause I don't have any pictures from that and laser welding - mainly because I haven't finished that task yet.

To start off - laser cutting is a technology allowing you to cut material - mainly sheets of plastics, wood, textiles and metals - according to your design. It allows fairly big precision, but there are some rules to remember. Laser recognizes lines depending on colour. Red is for cutting, black for raster and blue for engraving - at least that's how our school laser works. For that task we were to design Christmas decoration for cutting in clear perspex - either flat or 3D one. I decided straight away to design a snowflake in Rhino. Below, the last one on the right is my final file ready for cutting.

And below my lovely snowflake - it was good thing that I designed with consideration for hanging, as the slot for some reason came out too big. Thankfully, pretty blue ribbon sorted everything out!

 For laser sintering we were to design singular form in T-splines (which I like slightly better, but not enough to leave ArtCam). Direct metal sintering is slightly similar to printing, in how it works layer by layer - the difference is, you can work directly in metal, and instead of nozzle heating up plastic to layer up, here the machine spreads layer of powder (for example gold) and laser traces the shape of your design melting powder to form solid form. And it repeats and repeats until whole product is created - it's quite a long process, especially if the piece is large or complex. It allows you to create forms you couldn't do easily with casting, as well as make chains or bracelets as you can design links already joined - as long as you leave some space for the powder to be blown away, at least. The thing to remember is - the finish is not as good as with casting, so with more complex forms you might not be able to polish fully. The last 3 images from bottom right is my tiny model sintered in nylon by Digits 2 Widgets - London based company.

 Last but not least - laser engraving task was to design pattern for ring using Coral Draw, buy or make silver, flat ring and take it to laser engraving company - Geti (they are located in Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham). Laser engraving is pretty much engraving with laser - you can either engrave 3D form or 2D flat engraving which is what we were doing. My design was magpies - because they are one of my favourite birds. I'm very happy with my ring - the level of detail one can achieve with laser engraving is incredible!

As you hopefully remember, I want to enter my past and current project to Goldsmiths' competition, so just before Christmas I was working a lot on getting my renderings done (we unfortunately can't get access to Matrix at home due to licensing issues), and getting my head around how to convey movement of my spinning pendant and how to show everything that needs to be shown - inspiration, exploded views and close ups as well as finished renderings on one sheet of A3 paper.
To start off I had a look at jewellery adverts. You might ask why would I look at adverts? Especially considering that it's competition, but if you really think about it, competition is just as much about selling your piece, or design as companies do in adverts, therefore, I felt it was a good starting point.



 Conclusion I came to after looking at these adverts - models. In jewellery adverts there is usually someone to wear the piece. There were some very creative ones from Harry Winston - the one with bird holding rings on its beak, and of course my favourite ones were from Van Cleef & Arpels -they are very clever with their visuals.

I've also looked at how to show movement of my pendant, through use of blur or stills showing moveable section in different positions.
 Then I started thinking about my visuals, and trying to find image  of the model with good resolution.
 Which is harder than it seems, actually - getting right image, so that you can manipulate it in Photoshop so that it looks like someone is wearing necklace and earrings is tricky.

 Originally, bracelet entry was supposed to be similar to pendant - face of the model transforming into object of my inspiration for the piece, but it just didn't look right, so I had to try different combinations out.


That's what I have so far - I'll probably leave it off, so I can look at them with clear eye.

After wonderful Christmas break from work, I'm finally back to work. I still haven't started Uni, but that certainly doesn't mean I'm off the hook, so to get back on track, a bit of recap on what I was working on before Christmas.










 As soon as I take decent photo of model printed on Ember, I'll post it. As a side note I've contacted casting company just before Christmas, and after getting quotation, I've decided to print at School of Jewellery - they have printers working in material you can cast directly from, which is great cause it saves you money you would have to spend on CAD build and cold cure mould. They printed my models on Friday before Christmas, I went to take them down to Jewelcast and I got my castings back on Tuesday before Christmas, so I was very happy about it. Thanks Jewlcast - getting my castings back so quickly was the best gift ever!

Just a quick post today - since last time I was working mainly on refining design of link, getting scale, and size right, making sure pattern is fine and working on joining wire. I printed a lot of models on Up! - some better some not as good, but as it's all part of the process, so far I'm very happy with my progress. Some visuals of my work below.






 So far so good. At the moment I've sent an email to casting company, to check if design is all good to go - I might need to incorporate sprue into design if charge far that would be too much, maybe get model from better quality printer? Also I need to decide on setting I want, although I've been thinking that it link will be cast without it and setting added afterwards - it makes it more commercial, because customer might not want the stone, or have them only in few links...
I might get my laser engraved ring back on Monday, and that would mean that I will be all set to show you series of tasks I had to complete using laser technology. 

Hand-drawn jewellery rendering is very time consuming process - it's much easier to create render using specialistic software, like Matrix V-ray styles or Keyshot. But one doesn't always have availability of those software, which is why it's good to know how to create render by hand. It's not that difficult - one should just have basic understanding of light and shadow and how metal reflects light.






Everybody has different rendering technique and it's good to try different things before settling on one that feels best for you. I try to keep it simple - after all less is more. When it comes to colour, I personally find it easier to render silver, because it's kept mainly in black and white. Gold is more tricky, and frankly I should probably do few mock ups of gold jewellery pieces. Gems are a nice touch although facets can get bit tricky. The more you practice the better it will be!

Fern Collection - Pencil Crayons, Gouache

Petals Collection - Pencil Crayons, Gouache

Water tablepiece - Marker Pens

Water tablepiece - Marker Pens

Rose Cascade necklace - Pencil Crayons, Gouache

 To practise my fine rendering skills, I did a small scale drawing of my spinning pendant, including some photos of the process.

I'm quite happy with my progress this week - I did fair amount of CAD work and started printing models using Up! printer. They aren't perfect as Up! is much better for simple stuff and models rather than something as complex as my design. But it definitely gave me something to work from - I know now that I need to make joining wire much thicker and need to work on cut out pattern. But starting with CAD...

I chose one of the link designs and tried T-splines to recreate it - while I felt it was nice to try it out, I felt design was too flat and lacked fluidity. I understand T-splines bit better now, and while I see appeal of it, and how sometimes it's really great, I still feel unsure about it  - when it works great you can do some really good work, but when you have a lot of stuff to fix, it's bit confusing as to where even start.







 As a bit of side note - we have Christmas 3D printed decoration competition, and as part of that I've started doing some simple designs inspired by deer silhouette - and got a chance to print them out as well - I'll have to alter size of antlers as there's one point in which they are very thin, and think about how to hang them - I'll probably print out another one for competition and leave those for my own Christmas tree, because they are just too cute to hide in my sample box!

These past 2 weeks were very busy - one would think that after finishing CAD skills project and just before Christmas Design in context would be a nice and easy project to finish off year, but it seems like hard work just started. Finally, we get a chance at more hands on approach - designing in CAD is big part of it, but at the end of the project we are to be left with finished product or prototype. It's introduction to various laser technologies available - laser cutting, laser engraving, laser welding, direct metal sintering (done with laser). I will talk about these technologies in more detail, hopefully in one of my next posts. For today, some development work for my piece.