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Schmitt Jewelers: Jewelry Designer Mixes High-Tech, Goldsmith SkillsAll Sean Ryan really wanted was to become an artist.
Today, he is a goldsmith, designer and shop foreman at Schmitt Jewelers, where technology is playing a larger role in creating custom jewelry. As shop foreman, he oversees Schmitt's jewelers and is in charge of computer-aided design.
Ryan's role of an artistic designer would evolve from hand-sketched drawings and hand-carved molds to computer-aided drawings that are fed into a machine that produces molds.
"It allows us to make the original model much more accurately," he said. "The better the model, the better the final piece."
Not everything is done on computer, though. Human hands still put the pieces together.
But the computer is making intricate custom pieces, such the store's jeweled eggs, much less laborious and time consuming. That in turn leads to happier customers, who just can't wait to pick up their prized pieces, he said.
Phoenix-based Schmitt Jewelers decided to invest tens of thousands of dollars in the computer-aided design equipment about three years ago, primarily to improve productivity.
"We didn't want to automate the process and take the handcraftsmanship out, but to make it more efficient," Ryan said. "It elevates the level of accuracy."
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13/6/2004 | Viewed 7,961 time(s)
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