Platinum jewelry laser cutting adoption

Second-largest jeweler in the world (also Attleboro). They slice thick-walled platinum tube and turn down rings on screw machines. Switched from mechanical cutting (0.8 mm kerf) to high-power laser cutting (1/4 the kerf), $3–4M laser paid back in two months. Carrying cost on raw materials drives processing decisions in this industry.

Do you know how they make a platinum wedding ring? They start with a thick-walled platinum tube and they slice it, and they take those slices and put them in an automatic screw machine and turn them down to make little circular platinum bands. They used to cut them mechanically in that lathe, and they had a kerf that was about 8/10 of a millimeter, 1/32nd of an inch. A kerf is the width of the cut. That's a lot of scrap when you're dealing with platinum. In that industry — and I learned this 30-some years ago — the cost of processing is insignificant to the carrying cost of the interest charge: you're putting the product out the door from the gold bullion or the platinum bar that comes in, and getting it out as a finished product. If you can do that within 48 hours, not within two weeks — you want to do it two days, and you don't care what it costs to process it. That's different than most industries, but the value of the product at $22,000 a pound as raw material cost means you need to get it out of there quickly.