I have been learning about computer aided design and computer aided manufacture in the jewellery industry. CAD and CAM are very useful to jewellery designers and makers for many reasons. One reason is, it is cost effective for small business as well as large manufacture. For example if a piece of jewellery took two days to make and you wanted more of the same design to sell, it would be more cost effective to have the design cast multiple times at a casting factory in one day. This saves a lot of time, thus leaving you more time to design and make more jewellery to sell. CAD and CAM is also very precise and jewellers can determine the weight of precious metals and the final cost of the piece. Being so precise is really good for design as well because you could make small components that can be accurately joined together with accurate measurements. Designer Mathias Bengtsson has used CAD and CAM for his furniture design and his jewellery design. I have recently been to the Manchester art gallery where Mathias Bengtsson's slice chair, made of aluminium was part of the Nordic exhibition. The prototype for the chair was first made in wax which was scanned then redrawn and amended digitally. He then used CNC machinery to cut out each layer accurately, CNC stands for computer numerically controlled. This basically means the computer software tells the machinery what to do, this machinery are tools such as laser cutters, milling and lathes that can move around on different axises, some machines have up to five axises and move around all ways not just up and down and across.
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