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 fabri cate jewellery products with RP is not available. In this paper, a new dire ct and adaptive slicing methodology is applied to three-dimensional solid j ewel ring models to produce maximum inscribed three-dimensional stacked sla b models. Jewel rings that are symmetrical in one or more principal planes XY, YZ and ZX are considered. The maximum inscribed slab model will minimiz e material wastage in post-treatment processes and preserve the symmetric p roperty of the original jewel ring model. A solid torus is used as a simpli fied representation of the jewel ring in the description of the methodology . A case study based on the methodology is presented.