Behind the Scenes of Our Design and Manufacturing Process
At M.K. Diamonds, we’re committed to quality. We are also passionate about educating consumers as to what goes into making a quality piece. An exceptional piece of jewelry needs not only high quality precious metals and diamonds, but also innovative design and expert craftsmanship.
With over four decades of experience, we know what it takes to create some of the most exquisite diamond jewelry in the business. In order to share some of that knowledge with you, below, we’re taking a behind the scenes look at our jewelry design and manufacturing process. Read on to discover how an M.K. design is born.
Jewelry Design Inspiration and Ideation
Every M.K. Diamonds piece begins as a spark of inspiration. Our jewelry designers take inspiration from culture, architecture, and travel when conceptualizing new pieces. As they draft their initial design sketches, our team also considers how to merge their inspired ideas with both current trends and timeless jewelry design. Ultimately, we want our pieces to be both beautiful and practical, so that their owners can get the most use out of them. This is why we also encourage our designers to consider functionality when coming up with ideas for new designs, which has led to our creative use of convertible and multifunctional elements.
Our designers work on new ideas individually, creating sketches born from their personal inspiration. They then meet weekly to decide collectively which designs to scrap, expand on, or launch. On occasion, our designers also merge ideas at this stage of the process, fusing together elements drafted by different creative minds in order to create something uniquely beautiful.
Fine Tuning Each Jewelry Design
Once a design sketch is finalized, we send it to our partnered design team in Hong Kong. They then perfect and expand each sketch, after which they break down the cost of creating the piece.
We take a hard look at what our partners send us in terms of the cost of goods and labor to create a new design. We always analyze our margins before moving forward with production, as we do not want to create pieces with prices that do not make sense to consumers. We want to create designs that people want to buy and wear. Therefore, assessing what jewelry consumers value in jewelry-- and how much value they assign to the various elements of jewelry-- is a core part of our design process.
Jewelry Design Production
After our team agrees on moving forward with a design, we finally start the jewelry production process. Using meticulously sourced precious metals and genuine diamonds, our skilled artisans and craftsmen go to work fully realizing our designs.
The exact steps taken in our jewelry manufacturing process can vary depending on the piece. However, there are some steps our team will generally always take. First, using Computer Aided Design (CAD), we create a 3D model of our fine jewelry design, which is sent to a 3D printer that creates a wax model. Next, we move on to the jewelry casting process, which starts with making our jewelry mold from the wax model. Once our mold is ready, we begin forming our fine jewelry settings through lost wax casting, also known as investment casting, after which we fine tune our cast pieces with adjustments and assembly. Then, we set our diamonds, polish them to perfection, and perform a final quality control check upon each finished product.
The jewelry manufacturing step of our creation process is crucial, as our jewelry must be expertly crafted in order to be high quality. Truly, though, all of the steps that lead up to manufacturing are as important for the continued quality and value of our pieces. Exceptional jewelry starts with exceptional designs. Inspiration, creativity, design expertise, and collaboration are all vital parts of our process. It is the combined efforts of our talented designers and craftsmen that ensures our fine jewelry pieces are refined, consistent, strong, and memorable.
