Tiffany Rhode Island Super Bowl ring 3D-printed mold manufacturing

Example of an established commercial AM application — short production runs (200 molds) where the custom-design tax is justified.

So Mike Cima and Ely Sachs came along with an inkjet print head and laid down a very thin layer of ceramic, printed the adhesive on top, put another layer of ceramic, printed the thing, and just built it up. A lot of the stuff in the early '90s is developing the computer codes to make the complex structures. What were the early applications? One of the earliest applications was making casting molds for artificial hips. It was actually too expensive for a dentist early on. But an artificial hip is a $50,000 operation. If you can make that metal hip personalized for the patient so it fits right, fifty thousand dollar operation, who cares? You make the mold, you cast the alloy in a regular metal casting shop, but you make the mold. That's how they make the Super Bowl rings, too, still today. They're only going to make a couple hundred Super Bowl rings or World Series rings. You go down to Tiffany's down here in Rhode Island, and you'll see they've got about six 3D printers that are binding ceramics for the mold, and they can customize the design and make 200 molds for your rings, and then they destroy that, and you have to win another Super Bowl and get another design.