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[Looking 4] Electoforming Services

Jewelry Discussion
#1

Hi All!

Metalwerx will be offering an enameling class using electroforming.
For our class, we are interested in soliciting the service of any
company who understands the process of electroforming onto wax. Our
enameling students would send the waxes to you, smallish dimensions
(no larger than 4 & 4), you electroform the pieces and send them back
to us.

Elizabeth Schock, our enameling instructor, has created quite a few
pieces for her MFA Thesis. However, these tanks were at school. We
want to create a solid relationship with somebody from Orchid.

Karen Christians
M E T A L W E R X
50 Guinan St.
Waltham, MA 02451
Ph. 781/891-3854 Fax 3857
http://www.metalwerx.com/
Jewelry/Metalarts School & Cooperative Studio

#2

In my experience (I’m still trying to make it work on a small
workshop scale) electroforming is extremely difficult to maintain
at a professional standard. I’d love to hear from anyone in a small
workshop who reckons they can produce consistent good quality work!

In the whole of the UK there is only one professional electroforming
outfit (who are by appointment to HM the Queen as the Crown’s
jeweller-electroformers) and they have been going for 40 years. They
make and manage their own electrolytes and are 100% clear that
’purchased’ electrolytes dont provide consistent results.

They have told me that they find electroforming is easy for pure
copper, do-able for 999 silver but, in practice, not tenable for
even 24k gold in any meaningful production volumes and certainly
doesnt work for alloys (eg lower carat gold or even 925 silver).

They say that electroforming is very expensive and it is almost
always more cost effective to make jewellery by other methods.
Electroforms are usually for complex industrial part molds rather
than jewellery.

If you wish to get in touch with them they are called BJS and can be
found at this address

http://pages.123-reg.co.uk/richardlewis-755505/bjscompanyltd/id22.html

(no connection with me… other than that they have given me some
free advice and saved me a lot of money by doing so).

Have a look for yourself and maybe give them a call if you are so
minded.

good luck!