Technology does not guarantee innovative products, but innovative products can be made using only technology<\/p>Alparslan Misir, Alpress Design Moulding and Consulting, Turkey<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Innovators have come up with technology and processes that have liberated design and storytelling to meet these demands. Designers can give form to shapes and geometries that were not possible earlier, using new manufacturing methods like 3D printing, new materials, new techniques like lasers and much, much more. The need for transparency and social responsibility is served by advances in identifying gems and jewellery, like machines and processes that can differentiate between natural and synthetic stones. Detailed here are a few of these innovations and advances, and how they hope to help the industry appeal to the customer of the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imaginarium India Pvt. Ltd., India\u2019s largest rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing centre, has made great strides in using 3D printing for jewellery manufacturing and other applications. At the India Gold and Jewellery Summit 2019 in Delhi recently, Tanmay Shah, who heads Innovations at Imaginarium, was part of a panel discussion on innovation and technology. He said that technology could be used to put the customer at the start, rather than at the end, of the jewellery-making process. \u2018Customers are asking how they can be co-creators. With technology, you have the advantage of rendering and visualizing, allowing the customer to change the design before it has been manufactured. Virtual catalogues are a very real piece of tech today. All of this can be used to make a personalized product manufactured on demand\u2026 The jewellery industry has proven to be the best adopter of technology worldwide. We started with CAD\/CAM, employ direct castable RPTs (Rapid Prototyping Technology) today and could directly 3D print metals in the future,\u2019 he said at the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shah explains that from 15 years ago, when they started, to now, 3D printing in jewellery has cut a long production chain down to a much shorter process. Also, it makes \u2018impossible\u2019 designs possible. \u2018Today, we offer end-to-end support for anyone who has an idea for jewellery and wants to take it to market, right from taking 2D and converting it into 3D, prototyping it, making a single piece which might be used as a sample,\u2019 he says. Imaginarium has seen 20\u201330 per cent growth year-onyear for the past five to six years, and as of today, they make at least 2,500 unique pieces of jewellery and accessories per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With technology, you have the advantage of rendering and visualizing, allowing the customer to change the design before it has been manufactured. Virtual catalogues are a very real piece of tech today. All of this can be used to make a personalized product manufactured on demand<\/p>Tanmay Shah, Innovations \u2013 Leadership Team, Imaginarium India Pvt. Ltd.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n At the same summit, David Bertazzo of SISMA, Italy, outlined the company\u2019s work in three broad areas \u2013 micromachinery, lasers and additives. He presented their progress in laser metal fusion, which enables the entire process of manufacturing, from the digital stage to the solid article. \u2018Laser metal fusion is important because it a) allows digital processing \u2013 we can move beyond the instabilities of the casting process, and achieve greater reproducibility, b) provides the advantage of working things better, leading to improved product features, and c) positively affects the environment, health and safety by enabling us to work things more efficiently,\u2019 he explained. \u2018For a long time, manufacturing dictated the abilities of the designer. Now (with technological innovation), the balance has moved in favour of the designer, in symbiosis with the machine\u2026 We need to talk about technology as complementary to, not as a substitute of, existing technology,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alparslan Misir, of Alpress Design Moulding and Consulting, Turkey, presented their work on fusion technology \u2013 casting, stamping, laser and hollow, besides 2D laser cutting With technology, you have the advantage of rendering and visualizing, allowing the customer to change the design before it has been manufactured. Virtual catalogues are a very real piece of tech today. All of this can be used to make a personalized product manufactured on demand \u2013 Tanmay Shah, Innovations \u2013 Leadership Team, Imaginarium India Pvt. Ltd. Picture courtesy: Gemometrics newsletter-JAN 20.qxd 1\/6\/2020 5:46 PM Page 5 6 ] January 2020 and laser welding, and recently, also 3D laser cutting. Reiterating their motto that their work is \u2018more than moulds\u2019, Misir presented their work in laser colour marking, which reveals the hidden colours in gold to make beautiful designs without using any paint. \u2018Technology does not guarantee innovative products, but innovative products can be made using only technology,\u2019 he concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no doubt now that labgrown diamonds (LGDs) are part of the future of gems and jewellery consumption. But the customer today wants to know when they\u2019re buying natural and when they\u2019re buying synthetic, so credibility is at stake downstream. Also, the midstream is concerned about synthetic diamonds being passed off as natural and polluting the pipeline. Hence, companies and labs have come up with machines and processes to differentiate natural stones from synthetic ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surat\u2019s Massive Tech Lab has gem identification machines that can scan large quantities of diamonds of various sizes, and identify naturals and LGDs. Their G-Certain Synthetic Diamond Detector and JCertain Synthetic Diamond Detector for Studded Jewellery use German technology that can test all sizes (0.002Ct to 10Ct) and shapes of stones. They employ a real-time USB interface and can also scan studded jewellery. Ghanshyam Savani, Managing Director of Massive Tech Lab, says that they started the business in February 2016 in response to concerns about unscrupulous mixing. \u2018As synthetic grows, the need for detection also grows,\u2019 he says. \u2018LGDs cannot be detected through the eye or the microscope, even by experienced jewellers. Traders and honest jewellers were afraid that they would be sold synthetic diamonds as real ones.\u2019 How widespread the concern is, and how readily the trade has adopted this technology, is demonstrated by the fact that from 12 clients when they started, they now have 750 clients worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the Kimberley Process plenary meet in New Delhi last month, MD Sastry, Head of Research and Development, Gemmological Institute of India (GII), presented their work on a new instrumental method of colour grading of diamonds. \u2018Normally, in most labs, diamond grading is done by visually comparing sample stones with master stones, supplied by standard laboratories like GIA and agencies like CIBJO, under controlled light (daylight lamps) against a completely white background. The colour grade is given accordingly \u2013 D, E, F, G \u2013 for colourless or nearly colourless stones. There have been some instrumental methods used, particularly using absorption in the range of 350\u2013420nm, to monitor the N3 centre; this is called cape yellow. Most natural diamonds contain this centre. This requires two parallel faces and one needs to know the separation\/thickness between the two parallel faces to get the absorbance. That is correlated with colour grading,\u2019 he explains. \u2018The instrumental method we have developed uses the line position of what is called a platelet in the infrared absorption spectrum, which encodes information about N3 formation. This has the following advantages: (a) In this, we have shown that the line position is colour grade-dependent, and it can be accurately measured without the requirement of parallel faces, etc. As infrared absorption measurements are the mandatory requirements in assessing any diamond, most importantly in finding the diamond type, the platelet measurement can be integrated into that. This takes care of 98 per cent of natural diamonds (type-1a). No special instrument need be built.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/gjepc.org\/solitaire\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/dsadsa.jpg\")
<\/a>MANUFACTURING AND DISTRIBUTION<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
IDENTIFICATION AND CERTIFICATION<\/h4>\n\n\n\n