Development of Unique Cowrie Shell Inspired 3D Printed Cufflinks

Jewellery design is a profession that involves creating intricate jewellery, but it is a time-consuming and complex manufacturing method. Conventional jewellery manufacturing involves labour, complex designs, skilled craftsmen, patience, and time, leading to increased waste generation. To stay relevant in a dynamic market, traditional jewellery manufacturers need unique and appealing designs, precise measurements, high-quality materials, prompt delivery, and waste management. This work is aimed at demonstrating the utility of 3D printing in creating unique and novel nature-inspired cufflink designs to mitigate the issues mentioned above. 3D printing aids in fulfilling customer expectations providing solutions to product complexity, cost-effectiveness, and time efficiency. It maintains effective customization by modelling intricate designs through CAD, thereby overcoming the challenges. The process involves selecting a nature-inspired design form for cufflink jewellery using the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) tool. Cowrie shell is finalized as the nature-inspired form for the design of cufflink using QFD outcomes. Three cowrie shell cufflink conceptual models with oval, cross, and hexagonal base structures are created and converted to CAD models via 3D scanning and CAD modelling. These designs are then subjected to tensile and compressive loading ranging from 19.6 N to 100 N on PLA and castable wax resin materials for maximum stress and displacement. Tensile and compressive analysis results indicate that castable wax resin material has a higher von-Mises stress but is within the limit as compared to that of PLA material. Wax materials exhibited more displacement than PLA materials. Hence, cowrie shell-inspired cufflink models are then 3D printed using castable wax resin material on an SLA printer. Unique nature-inspired, i.e., cowrie shell cufflinks, are successfully obtained using the SLA 3D printing technique.