Layer manufacture of jewel ring by volume efficient methodology

Rapid prototyping (RP) technology has been widely used in making prototypes for quite a long time. However, an in-depth study of methods used to fabricate jewellery products with RP is not available. In this paper, a new direct and adaptive slicing methodology is applied to three-dimensional solid jewel ring models to produce maximum inscribed three-dimensional stacked slab models. Jewel rings that are symmetrical in one or more principal planes XY, YZ and ZX are considered. The maximum inscribed slab model will minimize material wastage in post-treatment processes and preserve the symmetric property of the original jewel ring model. A solid torus is used as a simplified representation of the jewel ring in the description of the methodology. A case study based on the methodology is presented.