The practice of collecting and forging jewelry goes back thousands of years. Jewelry serves various purposes, including accentuating beauty, storing wealth, showing status and commemorating events.
To distinguish between items that are of the same design and made from the same material, jewelry has often been marked in various ways. In the earliest times, this was done using more rudimentary methods such as rock scratching. Jewelry marking became a means of conveying messages, adding meaning and establishing ownership.
Over the centuries, humans have perfected the art of jewelry marking by adopting even better techniques and technologies. This is more so as wedding rings became a near-universal symbol of that life milestone called marriage. The emergence of laser marking technology has been an especially important turning point. It has made it possible to engrave a wide range of wedding ring materials with finer detail and accuracy than has been possible before. Visit here for practical examples of laser marking equipment.
Here are some of the most important advantages of laser marking wedding rings.
1. Permanent
Wedding rings signify one of the most important events in a person’s life. Despite the possibility of divorce in the future, no one gets into a marriage with the intention of eventually separating with their partner. Everyone aspires to live in a loving, happy, healthy and long-term relationship. A wedding ring remains an ever-present commemoration of that landmark event.
Laser marking creates a permanent symbol on a wedding ring and allows couples to always have that memory for as long as you want to have it with you. So secure is laser marking that it can withstand jewelry polishing.
2. Speed
By the time a couple is shopping for and ordering wedding rings, they likely already have elaborate plans for the wedding, including a date. Wedding preparation can be a chaotic time as the couple and the organizers grapple to ensure everything that’s needed is ready in time. You wouldn’t want something as critical as the wedding rings to be unavailable when they are needed.
Laser marking is quick and can be completed in no more than a couple of minutes per ring. There’s no need to worry about having to endure a weeks-long backlog of pending ring-marking requests at your favorite jeweler. For jewelers, this is an advantage too since the high throughput means they can deliver more ring-marking orders, thus improving the overall competitiveness of their business.
3. Uniqueness
Wedding rings are the most common form of jewelry. More than 4 million people get married in America each year. That’s a whole lot of wedding rings. Whereas every couple would like to believe they are getting a wedding ring that’s completely unique, it’s just not possible for that to happen for all 2 million couples that walk down the aisle annually. There’s a whole lot of cookie-cutter wedding rings out there and many weddings have to make do with these.
Fortunately, you don’t have to cough up thousands of dollars to have a set of unique rings. Laser marking can make that possible. Whether you want to indicate your names, initials, the wedding date or anything else that uniquely defines your relationship, laser marking makes it possible to have unique rings without breaking the bank.
4. Versatile
Whether you are looking for a simple design or a complex one, laser marking has a versatility that allows it to execute marking of a wide-ranging complexity. Perhaps you want a tiny but intricate design on your wedding rings that would otherwise be difficult to realize.
With a laser marker, you can engrave a photo, a pattern, a logo, a message and anything else of your choosing on the wedding ring. This allows you to achieve an extremely high level of detail that would be impossible with most other marking techniques.
5. Maintain Ring Integrity
Unlike engraving, laser marking doesn’t get rid of any material in the process of creating the image. Instead, it employs an annealing process that deploys heat in order to alter the color of the metal surface. That creates a crisp image while maintaining the smoothness and structure of the wedding ring.
The laser machine doesn’t come into contact with the ring, so no force is applied onto the metal. The risk of distorting or bruising the metal is eliminated. Contrast that with more traditional marking that involves close contact with the ring surface.
Also, given the precision of laser marking and the fact that it doesn’t use any chemicals, it won’t endanger or damage any other components of the ring, such as gemstones.
6. Environmentally Friendly
The world is moving towards sustainable living, eco-consciousness, and clean processes that are geared toward protecting the environment. This is born of a recognition that failure to conserve the environment will only make it harder for future generations to have an equal or better quality of life compared to today’s population.
Environmental problems are the sum total of the seemingly tiny action or inaction of individuals. By opting for wedding ring laser marking, you’ll be playing your part in contributing to a clean environment. It’s residue-free, so you can count on discharging non-biodegradable waste. In addition, a laser machine uses a tiny amount of consumables.
And if you are a jeweler, the near-zero waste policy, despite performing dozens or hundreds of laser markings each year, will certainly have a positive impact on the environment.
7. Seamless Duplication
One of the pains of wedding ring marking is ensuring that both rings are identical in all respects if that’s what the couple prefers. Traditional marking is fraught with risk, especially because you don’t have many opportunities for a do-over if you fail to get it right the first time.
With laser marking, you can create completely identical markings on the two rings – no need to worry about accidental imperfection or unintentional design variation. Everything will appear on both rings exactly as you want it.
If you’re a couple considering getting your wedding rings from ShopEDC.com marked or are a jeweler exploring the marking options you have, laser marking is certainly one of the most viable alternatives.