Feature from the September/October 2022 issue, posted online in January 2023, with Damiano Zito, David Fletcher and Michela Ferraro-Cuda. Roles, market assessments and forecasts reflect that period.
Additive manufacturing opens new possibilities in geometry and customization for jewelers and service bureaus, including applications in gold. Scaling these uses requires production capacity, cost and responsible sourcing to be considered together. This feature examines those challenges for precious metals.
Precious metals combine relative rarity, economic value and desirable properties. Examples include gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Their behavior depends on metal, alloy and environment: they are not chemically inert under every condition.
Material traceability, working conditions and environmental impacts are relevant considerations in this market, for both small workshops and major brands.
AM is not inherently sustainable. Its benefits require assessment for a specific part and production chain: material use and recovery, energy, post-processing, service life and end-of-life. Process choice does not remove the need for responsible sourcing.
To discuss this topic, we will explore:
I – Types and main characteristics of precious metals
II – Types of AM technologies that can process precious metals
III – The business case with circular economy and the reason why is it difficult to scale up Precious Metal AM in the jewelry industry
While the focus will be made on jewelry applications, it should be noted that precious metals can also be used in other vertical industries. These industries could be cited when and where required.
I- Types and main characteristics of precious metals
“Precious metals present unique characteristics compared to other metals. They do not oxidize to high temperatures, withstand high corrosion, and do not chemically interact with the environment. Characterized by a long lifetime, they are usually ductile and more lustrous in appearance. While the standards will introduce other material candidates as precious metals, there are currently four primary precious metals on the market: gold, platinum, silver, and palladium”, Damiano Zito, CEO of AM service bureau Progold S.p.A. told 3D ADEPT Media from the outset.
Clarification: Zito’s broad description is not unconditional for every metal or alloy. Silver can tarnish on exposure to sulfur compounds, for example. Material selection needs data relevant to its service conditions.
For powder-based processes, composition, particle size, morphology and cleanliness must suit the machine and application. Fine powders require appropriate handling and recovery systems; their value does not make them automatically easy or risk-free to handle.
“While gold and platinum remain the most widely used precious metals in AM, silver remains the cheapest one compared to other metals. That’s why, we easily see more applications with silver”, David Fletcher completes. The latter is a precious metals 3D printing expert and ex-Head of Business Development AM at Cooksongold, a UK supplier to jewelry makers.
Feedstock form depends on the manufacturing stage: granules may serve casting, while qualified powders feed processes such as powder bed fusion or binder jetting. These forms are not interchangeable without process adaptation.
Gold – one of the most widely known in jewelry – is unique for its durability, malleability, and ability to conduct both heat and electricity.
Used in jewelry and in other industrial applications, silver is known for its conductive, anti-bacterial and malleable properties.
Platinum on the other hand, receives a great demand from the automotive industry, where it is used to reduce the harmfulness of emissions. When transformed into an alloy, it enables to achieve key applications in jewelry and dentistry. “Platinum is much more mature when we look at metal 3D printing applications that can be achieved with precious metals; not to mention that it is compliant with the industry standards”, the representative of Progold notes. Optical and thermal behavior influences laser parameters. It does not alone guarantee a build time or compliance of a jewelry item.
Palladium is used in catalysis and in some jewelry or dental alloys. Its resistance and suitability depend on alloy and service conditions; those uses do not establish universal biocompatibility.
II – Types of AM technologies that can process precious metals
According to Fletcher, the difficulties in 3D printing precious metals lie in the ability of the operator to understand the interdependences between the machine, the powder and the whole process. Taking the example of Cooksongold, he explained that the company can 3D print in 18k yellow gold, 18k red gold, 18k white gold, 925 silver and 950 platinum due to parameters it qualified for their use on EOS machines.
That being said, it should be noted that additive manufacturing technologies that can process precious metals are divided into two groups: indirect 3D printing methods and direct 3D printing methods. For those who do not know, indirect manufacturing refers to the use of AM to produce tools like dies and molds for traditional processes, while direct 3D printing/manufacturing refers to the creation of parts straight from the design.
The indirect route prints a sacrificial pattern in wax or castable resin, followed by mold preparation and metal casting. Pattern removal requires a material-specific burnout cycle; resin cannot simply be treated as melted wax. The final part is cast.
For the direct route, Zito highlights laser powder bed fusion, often called SLM in this context. It is one variant within the powder bed fusion family. Other routes, such as binder jetting, require debinding and sintering. Each metal–machine–process combination needs qualification.
“In general, any technology that can process metals, can also process precious metals. However, the appropriate use of powders is of paramount importance to make the most of the manufacturing process and deliver a product with good price-quality ratio”, Zito outlines.
Fletcher also emphasizes material cost. Depending on metal, powder inventory and market prices, feedstock can represent a major investment, sometimes exceeding equipment cost. Recovery and loss tracking are therefore important to the economic assessment.
“On the other hand, there is an interest in the use of Binder Jetting technology for manufacturing silver. [Remember this qualification of Sterling Silver for Desktop Metal’s binder jetting technology]. One of the key challenges though, is the fact that silver is an ideal precious metal for mass production, but the resolution of binder jetting does not meet the requirements of mass production yet. From a sustainability standpoint, the technology has the same carbon footprint that traditional technologies. However, SLM currently remains a top-tier technology for precious metals because the small size of the build volume makes it a great deal to save material on the one hand; on the other hand, the technology can enable to save 3 or 4 times the carbon footprint that you usually generate with the traditional technology”, Zito explains.
These resolution and carbon-footprint comparisons are Zito’s assessments in 2022. The feature does not provide the life-cycle study needed to generalize the reduction factors or rank every process.
Conductive inks containing silver or gold can also be jetted to manufacture electronic features. This differs from making bulk metal jewelry; it does not mean every material-jetting system directly prints precious metals.
Comparing direct and indirect routes depends on volume, geometry, tolerances, finish and available equipment. Direct printing may extend design possibilities without being the least-cost option in every case.
III – The business case with circular economy and the reason why it is difficult to scale up Precious Metal AM in the jewelry industry
All three experts invited to this article share this view: “there is no linear economy in Precious Metals Additive Manufacturing (PMAM)”. The industry of precious metals itself relies on a circular economy approach.
The basic idea behind a circular economy is to create closed loops where both waste and new inputs are minimized and existing items/materials get re-purposed, repaired or recycled. In a linear economy, raw materials are extracted, transformed into products (often producing waste in the process), and eventually discarded.
Gold, silver and platinum can be recovered and refined for reuse. Real loops still require collection, separation and processing, with energy consumption and possible losses. Metal recyclability does not prove that every component of a jewelry item will actually be recycled.
So, where does the problem lie? Probably in the correlation that should exist between sustainability and scalability. By definition, sustainability is the “idea that goods and services should be produced in ways that do not use resources that cannot be replaced and that do not damage the environment.” It is also “the ability to continue at a particular level for a period of time”.
As organizations were exploring in 2022 new ways to move forward in their sustainability journey, Michela Ferraro-Cuda, Course Director, MA Luxury Jewellery Management, and a Lecturer in Luxury Jewellery and Ethical Branding, at Birmingham City University, UK, draws attention to the fact that sustainability currently concerns three main aspects: Profit, People and Planet.
“First, not only should we agree with the type of sustainability we refer to, but we should also keep in mind that an organization can truly say it is sustainable when it is responsible vis-à-vis these three aspects: it should be profitable, and responsible vis-à-vis its people and the planet” Ferraro-Cuda highlights. Based on our conversation with Ferraro-Cuda, there are two groups of people in this sustainability journey; each of them employing or may employ a different path to sustainability:
| Organization | People | Environment | Economic viability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workshops and artisans | Training, occupational safety and supplier traceability. | Metal origin, energy, recovery and waste treatment; local production alone does not establish the footprint. | Volumes, labor, equipment and feedstock costs assessed case by case. |
| Larger organizations | The same requirements, also monitored among partners and subcontractors. | Comparable measurements across the value chain and production sites. | Investment, qualification, recovery and demand; marketing does not guarantee profit. |
Mercury use is associated with some forms of artisanal gold extraction. It must not be attributed to all artisan jewelers. The table identifies assessment points without presuming any organization’s practices.
Ferraro-Cuda highlights “the lack of data to support their decisions.” Beyond financial resources, companies need comparable evidence on quality, costs and impacts when choosing a manufacturing route.
Metal and equipment costs require AM to be compared with machining or casting for a specific application. The value of a geometry, small batch or customized product can change that comparison.
To this, Damiano Zito replies that big corporations should realize that the end customer likes to change and increasingly wants customized products and that’s something that AM can help enable while allowing to control all the manufacturing-related costs. For the CEO, it’s “a matter of time and a problem of culture”. As he reflects on his company’s journey, he realized that they have been on this market for a decade at the time of this interview, and it’s been a few years that other companies have penetrated this market. “This means that there is a demand that is increasing over time, and that’s positive for the AM industry”, he concludes.
Conclusion
In a March 2018 announcement, SmarTech presented AM for small batches of high-value parts as a growth opportunity, notably in jewelry and aerospace. This was a market outlook, not a measurement of later adoption.
That 2018 forecast projected more than $250 million in precious-alloy materials revenue and nearly $2 billion in related AM revenue by 2028. These figures are preserved as historical projections; this article does not establish that they have been achieved.
This feature was first published in the September/October 2022 issue of 3D ADEPT Mag.
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