Roland R-World Online | Fall 2007

JWX-10 Increases Productivity for Award-Winning Jeweler

CHENNAI, INDIA – Headquarted at Chennai, India, Abhilasha Jewellers Pvt., Ltd. was established in October 2003 by Prakash Chand Jain, Chairman of Prakash Gold Palace Group of Companies. The company employs 150 and annual sales are 70 million USD. The company manufactures plain, cast and antique jewelry.

Abhilasha Jewellers was awarded the Best Exporter Performance award for the year 2004 to 2005. The company initiated a CAD/CAM department with the aim of converting from traditional methods to state-of-the-art jewelry manufacturing.

Abilasha Jewellers bought a Roland JWX-10 milling machine in August 2005. They feel that the machine is both user friendly and cost effective. Roland JWX-10 has saved production time, reduced manpower requirements, and increased overall productivity. Sales have increased by 25% every year since installation of the device. In addition, they are able to complete customer orders in record time.

Mr. Jain visited a jewelry seminar at Chennai for manufacturers who were using traditional casting methods and happened to see the JWX-10 being demonstrated. A key benefit is its user-friendly operation. The JWX-10 does not require a user to learn typical CAM software with G-code and M-code. They found that any person with a jewelry background can begin operating the machine in very little time thanks to the included Modela Player 4 software.

Manual design costs once varied from 15 to 75 USD according to the complexity of design; the cost also varied from rings to necklaces.

Now with the JWX-10, design cost is reduced to 7 to 36 USD – a reduction of 50%. Overall, the dependence on skilled labor has been reduced. Whereas manual designs required skilled manpower to produce high-cost, silver carvings, the JWX-10 requires fewer skilled people to produce and test high-quality designs.

Almost 60% of jewelry designs are achieved by the JWX-10. The rest is handled manually. With the JWX-10, Abhilasha averages 6 gentlemen’s rings per day and 8 ladies’ rings per day. In an average month, they create 220 designs including rings, pendants, earrings, necklaces, etc. One obvious example of how the JWX-10 can save time is in the production of earrings. Earrings must be hand-carved manually for both left and right ears in silver whereas they can mirror the design in CAD and quickly mill accurate models. For a necklace, much of the design is symmetric which can be mirrored in CAD and machined with great time savings.

Since purchasing the JWX-10, the design department has been reduced from 30 to 20 people. Productivity has increased by 60%. They have managed to produce more designs according to the customer instructions and requirements in less time. Timely delivery has helped Abhilasha to obtain still more orders, resulting in sales increasing by 25%.