Like so many things, there are so many variables involved in the
formation of pits that it’s exhausting just to think about it. But a
few pit avoidance and pit remedy laser welding tips are;
-
With white gold, use 14K palladium white gold wire. It lasers MUCH
bet ter than 14K nickel white gold. Keep your settings as low as you
can while still getting a good weld. -
If you are generating a lot of carbon, you settings are too high
(not suggesting settings because it depends on which machine you’re
using). The creating carbon thing applies to any metal, the cleaner
your weld the fewer pits you’ll have. -
Create a little depression over the pits with the laser or a bur,
fill the depression with nice clean welds and then compress the weld
with a hammer handpiece or the like. When compressing the weld you’re
also compressing the pits, hopefully driving them a bit below the
surface. To keep the pits from showing themselves, cleaning up the
lasered/compressed area is tricky.
I have found that lapping the area and then high polishing with a
little rouge only works. The key is to remove the minimum amount of
material possible yet get it high polished. If you rubber wheel the
area, you’ll have pits, if you emery, then tripoli, then high polish
with rouge…you’ll have cut into the pits. Sometimes you’ll need to
compress, lap and high polish a couple of times to get them all. But
at least it works. Hey, if you wanted aneasy job you wouldn’t be a
metalsmith. It’s all about crappy career choices my friends.
Mark