@ringdoctor…thanks for your comment. I thought as much, but, having no direct experience, I thought someone with such should reply. The last time the subject of 3D printing came up I did some research, including looking at some research papers presented at SNAG which had 10X or so blowups of various castings. The paper was from a few years ago. The resins used at that time gave either rough or semi-rough surfaced castings. I understand since that time some resins have been developed which use some wax in their composition, and these may produce smoother castings…again, a question for someone with more direct experience with these. It seems that a wax carved by CNC via CAD instructions would be smoother than these 3D printed ones, and I don’t really understand why 3D printing has replaced this kind of machine based wax carving. Cheaper??? Evidently what you are seeing, ringdoctor, is castings made from resins which just don’t produce great smooth surfaces.
@Andrath…I think if you look at ringdoctor’‘s post, you have your answer already. If your melee is sized via diamond sieves, it passes, say, a 2mm sieve and doesn’t pass a 1.9mm sieve, so your stones are between these two diameters. As ringdoctor noted, this doesn’t make their crown height, pavilion depth or girdle thickness the same, unless the sorter has actually sorted these visually. If he has lots of goods and lots of time, he can get you pretty close to identical, but I don’t think you are going to find anyone willing to take this kind of time with your order. Hence my thought that you are going to need at least two or three burs of each type for each diameter stone you are using and you are going to have to develop some skill at boring the holes so that the stones sit level and all at the same height. The term " pave’ " refers to paving stones like those in the street, and these are supposed to be all at the same height so that you don’t trip going down the street…at least in modern times, that is. The illustration of the Cuban ring you sent looked quite nicely even in its setting.
Let’s not belabor this issue further…your expert is telling you this is a piece of cake and I’m sounding a more cautionary note. It’s your call what to do…if you go forward directly with this, why not just shoot some pictures of your finished ring and post them here. If it’s as simple as you contend, I have some crow in the freezer that I can defrost and warm up for dinner…LOL…-royjohn