Im am posting here hoping that someone would be able to help me with an issue that my company is having. If you have any background in jewelry you will understand the whole issue, if you have any questions, please feel free to have me elaborate further.
We make wedding and engagement rings. One of the alloys that we use to make our rings is an 18k Gold alloyed with Palladium, Copper and Silver (the palladium is to eliminate the nickel to be sold in Europe). We do not cast our metals/rings. We pour bars into a thickness of appx 1 inch, roll them down into thinner bars of appx .
135 inch, we blank out discs from them, and then we form tubes through extrustion, and cut blanks with a cnc machine off of those tubes. We have sold a significant amount of these rings to blank manufacturers, etc. However, we have one customer that has had many issues with our metal.They are getting it from another supplier, whom they state they have had no problem with. We got one of their rings, had the alloy tested, and made an alloy to the EXACT specifications of theirs, so we know its not the alloy (assuming for the alloy supplier not messing up)
The rings we have made for other people, for polishing, swisscutting, etc, have had no problem. Even rings that have been bead set, havent had many issues if any. The rings for this customer with the problems are prong set diamond rings and earrings. They are stating (and with photo proof too) that the prongs are simply cracking, or just too brittle to hold up. We anneal all of the pieces for all of our 18k palladium customers the same, in the same ovens, using the same machines, and the same alloy without issue. My customer says they do nothing different with OUR rings, then they do with their other supplier, yet they said they have had no issue at all with them
I have stretched our rings from size 3 to a size 14 without cracking (BIG DIFFERENCE), so I cannot understand what might be happening in this situation. Any insight that you might have would be GREATLY appreciated.
Scott