The digital transformation of the jewelry industry-from personalized design to distributed production

On April 30, 2021, Guangzhou Xingxiu, a leading jewelry digital transformation company, and Oqton signed a cooperation agreement with Oqton. Xingxiu will use Oqton’s jewelry industry solutions to realize the end-to-end process of jewelry 3D Printing manufacturing. In recent years, the jewelry industry has been facing such a dilemma. It is difficult for consumers to obtain a piece of jewelry that completely conforms to their own ideas. At the same time, the majority of jewelry designers cannot directly connect their ideas to the market. Xingxiu has always believed that technology is the key to breaking the game. Through long-term exploration of transformative business models in the jewelry field, Xingxiu has created a personalized creative empowerment platform. A major feature of the Xingxiu platform is that joint creation can be realized on the original design. The blockchain technology is used to protect and inspire jewelry design IP, so that the value can be transmitted, and the dream of every jewelry designer can be achieved. As more and more personalized designs continue to emerge, 3D printing is undoubtedly the most suitable technology in order to make these designs quickly enter the market and make fashion come to consumers in the first time.

The value of 3D printing design to the jewelry industry First of all, 3D printing helps to achieve more complex designs. Because one of the core advantages of 3D printing is that the cost of printing is not sensitive to the complexity of the design. Unlike traditional processes, the more complex the product, the higher the production cost. The second is mass customization. As a digital manufacturing technology, 3D printing enables jewelry designs to be stored and transmitted in digital form. If you want to redesign or customize, the convenience and efficiency are far beyond traditional manual craftsmanship. Traditional craftsmanship is mainly suitable for the mass production of jewelry, while 3D printing has obvious advantages in realizing small batch customization. Many different styles can be printed at one time, which has more cost and efficiency advantages.

Efficient production of 3D printed jewelry One of the core advantages of 3D printing is distributed manufacturing. The great advantages of distributed manufacturing in terms of cost, resources, and supply chain make it an indispensable part of industrial transformation and upgrading. Xingxuan also opened a distributed factory, that is, a model of cloud management + local manufacturing. However, the distributed jewellery 3D printing factory also poses new challenges in many aspects such as order management, production technology, operating specifications, production scheduling, remote equipment maintenance, and product traceability. Oqton’s jewelry industry solutions address these production and operation challenges, by integrating all production data, forming a complete digital clue, opening up the end-to-end process, and realizing the flexible production of distributed jewelry 3D printing factories. First of all, it supports the file import of a variety of mainstream design software, such as JewelCAD, Rhino, ZBrush, Blender, etc., and performs automatic repair without manual intervention. Then, the Oqton platform uses artificial intelligence to automate key processes, including: 1. Automatically identify various types of jewelry. Different types of parts such as rings, bracelets, and pendants will be processed using different process paths. 2. Automatically find the ideal placement angle for the parts. This helps to reduce the amount of support materials used, improve the surface quality of parts, while reducing printing time and the complexity of post-processing procedures.

3. According to different types of parts, cone-shaped or lattice-shaped supports are automatically generated, and the supports are prevented from contacting important surfaces to ensure the surface accuracy of the jewelry. Artificial intelligence can also learn user-preferred classification methods, placement angles, and support generation strategies based on actual usage, so as to achieve a perfect combination of personalization and automation. After that, the Oqton platform can achieve high-density typesetting that cannot be done manually, further improving the utilization of equipment.

Artificial intelligence realizes the automation of key processes, including: type recognition, placement angle, support generation and dynamic scheduling. Automatic scheduling based on artificial intelligence will arrange production tasks to various equipment across regions according to the delivery date. The scheduling result can also be dynamically changed based on the priority of the order and the real-time information of the device obtained through the Internet of Things. For orders with delivery risks, it will issue a warning and dynamically insert orders. The Oqton platform also monitors key equipment components and gives predictive maintenance or replacement recommendations. For managers, through flexibly configured Kanban and reports, they can see various real-time data and historical data in production. The Oqton platform retains a complete digital trail from order to delivery. For every link of production, whether it is 3D printing, machining, post-processing, quality inspection and delivery, the orders, parts, materials, tools, and equipment information involved can be traced back, and the production status is truly at a glance No more. To

Managers can see various real-time and historical data in production through flexibly configured billboards and reports. One more thing: Precious metal 3D printing In addition to 3D printing jewelry wax models, Xingxiu is also exploring direct 3D printing of precious metals. Compared with printing wax models, precious metal 3D printing eliminates the steps of planting wax trees, making plaster casts, and finally casting, which further simplifies the process. Moreover, 3D printing of precious metals can break through the technological limitations of casting, realize more complex geometric structures, and raise the degree of freedom of design to a whole new level. However, metal 3D printing has high technical barriers. Practitioners need to theoretically establish a deep understanding of design, technology, materials, equipment operation, post-processing and other aspects, and have experienced a large number of printing tasks in practice. A metal 3D printing expert needs years of experience accumulation, and the company also needs to invest in high equipment, materials and time costs during this period. Oqton’s artificial intelligence-based solutions can provide full guidance in the metal 3D printing process, help avoid various risks that may lead to failure, and increase productivity while reducing reliance on manual experience. These saved time and labor costs enable Xingxiu to focus more on design, operation and service, and bring higher added value to customers.