Winda Jewelry is one of the market leader for Stainless Steel Jewelry business more than 10 years, with our own factory, over 20,000 designs, our products include earrings, rings, necklace, pendants, bracelets, chains, bangles, anklets and so on. We had the honor to serve some of famous companies all over the world. We believe our price and quality will give your an edge over your competitors!
LET'S SEE THE PROFESSIONAL PROCESS OF MAKING STAINLESS STEEL JEWELRY:
Melting the Steel
Stainless steel jewelry is durable and safe to wear for people with allergies. The manufacturing process is similar to jewelry made with other metals. The first step is melting the steel in a large vat. The holding talk resembles a giant pot. People who work around steel wear protective clothing and eyegear because the process is dangerous. A breathing mask is used to protect workers' lungs from the fumes. The machine mixes and heats the silver into a hot, liquid metal.
Molding
When the steel reaches the right temperature, the melting machine suctions and transports the hot liquid to another area where it can be dispensed. The heavy-duty transport system moves the silver from the melting pot to the molding station, without touching human hands. Once the metal reaches the right temperature, it needs to be poured into jewelry molds before cooling begins. Ring and necklace molds are the most common. The steel is allowed to reach room temperature in the molds. Once the molds are cool, they are transported on a conveyer belt to the next area in the process.
Baking
The next step is setting the steel. The molds are moved to a large oven, where they are baked at 450 degrees for one hour. After the jewelry has been baked, it is cooled again until it is no longer hot to the touch. Workers can easily remove the molds by hand to inspect the final product. If any flaws are detected, the steel pieces are placed in a scrap bin to be melted again. Molds are designed to create a perfect product, but sometimes a small air bubble is created. The jewelry that passes inspection is buffed, polished and placed in bins, where it is packaged and sent to stores or directly to customers.
CNC
CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control and has been around since the early 1970's. Prior to this, it was called NC, for Numerical Control. (In the early 1970's computers were introduced to these controls, hence the name change.)
While people in most walks of life have never heard of this term, CNC has touched almost every form of manufacturing process in one way or another. If you'll be working in manufacturing, it's likely that you'll be dealing with CNC on a regular basis.
As you can easily see, there is a lot of manual intervention required to use a drill press to drill holes. A person is required to do something almost every step along the way! While this manual intervention may be acceptable for manufacturing companies if but a small number of holes or workpieces must be machined, as quantities grow, so does the likelihood for fatigue due to the tediousness of the operation. And do note that we've used one of the simplest machining operations (drilling) for our example. There are more complicated machining operations that would require a much higher skill level (and increase the potential for mistakes resulting in scrap workpieces) of the person running the conventional machine tool.
By comparison, the CNC equivalent for a drill press (possibly a CNC machining center or CNC drilling & tapping center) can be programmed to perform this operation in a much more automatic fashion. Everything that the drill press operator was doing manually will now be done by the CNC machine, including: placing the drill in the spindle, activating the spindle, positioning the workpiece under the drill, machining the hole, and turning off the spindle.
How to Cut Stainless Steel Wire
Stainless steel wire secures tall structures and provides a safe railing that does not obstruct your view from your porch. Numerous methods of cutting stainless steel wire to length exist, but many of them unwind multiple strands of wire or create sparks that could ignite combustibles on fire. One tool is designed to cut cleanly through stainless steel wire without leaving a burr and does not create a fire hazard by throwing sparks on combustible materials
Instructions:
1. Measure the length of stainless steel wire needed with a tape measure.
2. Mark the measured dimension on the stainless steel wire with a permanent marker. Wrap masking tape around the mark if you are
cutting stainless steel cable.
3. Inspect the jaws of the cable cutters. If you notice damage on the blades, replace the cable cutters before attempting to cut the
stainless steel wire.
4. Cut the stainless steel wire. Open the jaws of the cable cutter. Slide the open jaws of the cable cutter over the stainless steel wire.
Align the jaws of the cable cutter with the marked you placed on the wire with a permanent marker. Squeeze the handles of the
cable cutter together to cut the stainless steel wire to length.
5. Remove the masking tape from the stainless steel wire (if required). Run a file on the cut end of the stainless steel wire to remove
the burr left by the cable cutters.
Plating Stainless Steel Jewelry
Plating is a centuries-old technique that changes the surface properties by placing a coating over the metal underneath. Whereas plating is commonly done to prevent corrosion, stainless steel, with its high chromium content of 10 percent to 11 percent, is inherently resistant to corrosion, stains, and rust, though it is not completely stain-proof. Plating is also done for aesthetic reasons, to make the metal easier to solder, to make it metal more durable or harder, to reduce friction, to make paint adhere more readily, to make the metal more or less conductive, or to shield it from radiation.
PVD
Before the coating takes place the material that is to be coated needs to be thoroughly cleaned. The tools are then placed into the vacuum chamber on special fixtures, which ensure that the coating is applied uniformly. The chamber is set to 10-6 torr -- a high vacuum setting -- and backfilled with an inert gas such as argon which then ionizes the parts. This is known as the gas cleaning stage and it prepares the parts for the metal-coating phase.
Metal Coating
The material used to coat the parts is evaporated and ionized and sent at high speed into the vacuum and the argon. It is then deposited onto the parts in an equal amount. The properties of the material remain unchanged during the PVD coating process.
Changing the Composition of the Material
You can change the nature of the material used for the coating during the process by changing the volume and type of gas used in the vacuum. In doing so you can produce ceramic coatings, including oxides, nitrides and carbides. For example, in order to make zirconium nitride, which forms a brass color and is extremely hard wearing, nitrogen is added into the vacuum in addition to the zirconium.
Advantages
PVD coating has many advantages over other forms of coating such as painting and electroplating. When used on a large scale it results in less hazardous waste materials being produced compared to electroplating. In addition, the coatings created by PVD are often harder and more corrosion-resistant than those created by electroplating and painting. Protective topcoats are almost never needed with PVD coatings.
Electroplating
Electroplating, also called electrodeposition, is a method of plating steel that can be likened to operating a battery in reverse. Rather than freeing electrons to create current, as a battery does, electroplating binds the extra electrons on the surface of an ionic metal with an anode. The anode is the positively charged metal in solution, which produces a non-ionic film on the steel. This method is used to plate stainless steel with copper for a finished product combining the strength of steel with the conductivity of copper.
Brush Plating
Brush plating is a specific type of electroplating, and this is the preferred method for plating stainless steel with gold. After a careful cleaning and polishing, the stainless steel is prepared with a bath of nickel strike solution. With a current running through the metal just as with regular electroplating, the gold plate is brushed on, which allows control of which sections end up plated and which do not.
Electroless Plating
Electroless plating, so called because the process uses no external power, involves an aqueous solution in which several chemical reactions take place simultaneously. Sodium hypophosphite, or another reducing agent, releases hydrogen as hydride ions, which produce a negative charge on the steel to be plated. This then enables other, positively charged metals to form a film on the steel.