Hi Jewely makers, Science is a building a new tool for DMS and trying to make it as useful and applicable to every member as possible. The tool is called a Raman spectrometer and can be as simple as shining a laser at something if designed well and with a purpose in mind. Might DMS jewelers be likely to use such a tool for determining the quality and authenticity of various gem stones if understanding how to use the tool and read the results for jewelry purposes took a few hours of training? Do jewelers ever need to know the purity of any chemicals or if certain chemicals or other materials are still viable after months of shelf life? What about determining the presence of residues? Using a Raman spectrometer for chemical analysis and detection purposes is much simpler and would require little training. Just fishing around for ideas. Any feedback greatly appreciated.
I was considering for both here and foundry, the purity of precious metals.
Sincerely,
Tim Nielsen
Yea… that’s one of the things it can’t do unless you’re looking to identify the presence of non-metallic impurities
Would it work to tell sterling silver wire from base metal or plated wire? Or Sterling sheet from nickel silver?
Only if you dissolve them in acid first, so far as I am aware!
Raman spectrometers can identify metal oxides and metal tarnishes but they wouldn’t be able to detect anything beneath a silver plating. If your nickel silver is not coated with silver, then a Raman spectrometer will be able to easily tell the difference from it and real silver. If one was willing to make the tiniest of scratches or acid etching (maybe slightly bigger than a pin head I’m guessing) on something suspected of being silver plated, one could then focus the laser onto that scratch to determine the composition of the underlying metal.
I would be interested in using this for my stones. I typically buy from reputable sources that I trust, but it would be nice to know for sure on some of them.
Hi Jessi, awesome! I’ll look into this further and try to incorporate this capability into the first build. What stones in particular do you work with?
I work with just about everything, but off the top of my head I’m curious about a few pieces of turquoise as well as some that I’m guessing are agates.