Analysis of impurities arising from braising processes in thin wire filigree jewellery

China Jewel is a designer, manufacturer and retailer of extruded wire filigree jewellery. This rare type of jewellery is difficult to manufacture. In addition to being labour intensive, the range of designs tend to be limited to well-known, traditional forms, whereby experienced makers have gradually evolved methods of reliably producing the complex geometries without experiencing costly failures. An inability to codify the manufacturing process prevents China Jewel from offering the range and frequency of new designs that is now expected from high street jewellery brands.This project will investigate measurement techniques to associate failures (eg mechanical failures and electroplating failures) with particular manufacturing steps. If successful, follow-on work applying these measurement techniques to a broad range of production pieces and newly-designed pieces could lead to manufacturing processes becoming capable of being specified precisely from the drawing board, giving China Jewel much more flexibility in developing new designs and enabling the brand to be competitive versus high street cast jewellery brands.