Jewelry Production Process: From Idea to Reality:
- Creating a Mood board, Sketch & Computer Aided Design: Creating unique designs is the core foundation of Kora Kora. Before every design we create a mood board collecting thousands of reference images. Our designs for our first collection are inspired by pop culture, modern art, nature and current world events. 2D Drawing and Illustrations are created during the sketching process. During this phase, our team has a lot of back forth communication for modifying the sketches for further improvement. Once approved, a final tech pack is produced with front, side and back view measurements along with shape reference.Based on the initial drawings, a 3D CAD is created. That file is then used to create physical prototypes of the jewelry, which are made with the use of CAM software and growing machines.These works are then sent to the factory where they will be transformed from data to a 3-D wax or resin form.
- Rubber Mould Cutting & Wax Model: Next step is to create a rubber mould by pressing several layers of rubber around the jewelry master. The rubber mould is injected with molten wax, which later hardens into exact copies of the original jewelry master.
- Treeing, Casting, Cleaning & Cutting: The wax model is cleaned are attached to a wax tree with a burner, adding more wax until the tree is full. The wax trees are then placed into metal cylinders to create plaster molds. The cylinders are then filled with liquid gypsum and heated in a burnout oven for several hours, baking the gypsum into a hard plaster and melting and evaporating the wax. The plaster molds then go into a casting machine and silver or gold alloy is poured. The metal alloy melts down into the forms, replicating the jewelry master. When the plaster casts have cooled down, the metal trees are removed from inside and cleaned to remove any residue. The jewelry forms are cut from the tree. Any surplus metal is refined and reused.
- Grinding & Stone Setting: To prepare the metal for further adornment, a rough polish is applied to smooth out uneven areas. Different elements are assembled and soldered to finish the masterpiece. Each stone is individually put on by the goldsmith, followed by an in-line quality control.
- Polishing & Finishing: Every piece of jewelry is polished beautifully before the most important quality control check. The jewelry is placed in a special tumbler machine to smooth the surface before ultrasonic cleaning removes any residue. This step creates different surface effects on metals such as high shine, to create a spectacular texture that is both matte and brilliant without using stones.
- Oxidation, Plating & Final Quality Control: In this step, special finishes are added to select high-quality metals to create different tones and contrasts. Finishes include oxidization, e-coating and plating on metals such as 18k gold plating on a sterling silver piece. All pieces of jewelry go through a vigorous quality control process, and here we give the final approval based on the quality standards
- Packing & Shipping: Final step is packaging Kora Kora’s jewelry and shipping it all over the world to our customers.