Bob Hendricks, owner of Hendricks Manufacturing, adapted a CNC machine for cutting wax models for  class rings and expanded his business by 50 percent. The typical way of making models for rings and other jewelry is to cut the wax by hand or with a pantograph. This is slow and time consuming. Hendricks configured a CNC machine to cut the models automatically from school emblems that are scanned into a computer. Because the CNC machine cuts wax much faster than the previous methods, Hendricks can charge less for class rings than other suppliers. The combination of his attractive prices and fast turnaround has attracted notice in the industry, bringing Hendricks a huge increase in orders. "We are growing at a tremendous pace and will probably be up by 50 percent two years in a row," he says. Hendricks recently bundled the necessary CNC machine accessories and his custom CAM routines into a package called Create-A-Ring that he is offering as a curriculum to schools with CNC mills.

Hendricks Manufacturing is located in Kearns, Utah. The company has been in business for more than 10 years, producing and selling jewelry on both a wholesale and retail basis. On the retail side of the business, Hendricks produces a range of custom and short-run fine jewelry items. The wholesale side of the business is involved mainly in producing personalized signet rings, such as class rings for schools. Other organizations such as sports teams, private companies, and law enforcement agencies also buy the rings. Currently Hendricks Manufacturing employs five people in addition to the owner.

The process of making a class ring is similar to that for making other pieces of fine jewelry. Called the lost wax casting process, it begins with the designer hand carving the shape of the piece in wax. The wax is then dipped into in plaster-of-paris like substance called dental investment that hardens around it. This goes into a oven then heated to 1350-degrees that melts out the wax. Gold or silver is then poured into the cavity left in the dental investment by the lost wax. Once the metal hardens, the whole structure is dunked in water, which shatters the investment leaving the jewelry. If it is a one-of-a-kind piece, the piece is polished and the process ends there. For class rings, which are produced in larger quantities, the next step is make a rubber mold from the first metal ring. Wax is poured into the rubber mold to make additional wax pieces, which are dipped, in the dental investment and taken through the rest of the lost wax casting process.

Large suppliers of class rings typically use a pantograph instead of carving the school emblem freehand into wax. "This is more accurate but it's still a manual process, and it's slow and time consuming," says Hendricks. "But it's been the industry standard for more than 100 years." Depending on the complexity of the school's emblem, carving the wax mold with a pantograph can take a few hours or more than a day. When Hendricks first saw a CNC machine in action, he realized that it could be programmed to cut wax models automatically. "With these machines, you can mill any design that you can scan in or create on the computer," he explains. "The beauty of it is that the machine is far more accurate than a pantograph. Also, the machine cuts much faster than a human can."

Hendricks tried using a few other CNC machines before settling on the Techno CNC milling machine from Techno Isel, New Hyde Park, New York. This machine was designed for production routing and drilling on a wide variety of materials including wood, plastic, MDF, solid surfacing materials, and nonferrous metals. "The Techno machine was faster than the other machines I had tried," Hendricks explains. "It also appeared to be more durable than the others, which often broke down for considerable periods of time." The reason the Techno machine is more durable than other machines in its price range is due to the materials used in its construction. For example, the machine uses anti-backlash ball screws. These screws have excellent power transmission due to the rolling ball contact between the nut and screws, and this type of contact ensures low friction, low wear, and long life. In addition, the machine constructed on steel stress-relieved bases with hardened steel linear ways. "Its shaft-and-bearing system produces very smooth, play-free motion and is an extremely rigid system that produces high-quality cuts," Hendricks adds.

After he acquired the machine, Hendricks spent some time programming the CAM system that came with it to produce the ring styles he wanted. Currently he has routines for creating four different ring styles with three variations per style. Some styles have a stone on top, for example, while others have a design carved into the top surface. Some rings have lettering or other graphics on the sides while others don't. "With these routines, we can create just about any signet ring," Hendricks explains. "The routines create the four basic surfaces for each of the different ring styles. The design or graphics are scanned into the computer, and then selected by the operator when prompted for it by the programming routine."

The first step in making wax models on the Techno machine is to set up the machine. First, the operator installs an indexing head on the mill's base. Then he installs a wax ring mandrel and places the wax ring blank onto the mandrel. After putting the cutting tool in the chuck, the set-up is complete. Next the operator goes to the CAM system and selects one of the custom routines. After entering the information that the routine requests, all that is left is to give the command to start the cutting process. "You press start and you can walk off and leave the machine," says Hendricks. Depending on the complexity of the graphic elements, the cutting process takes about an hour.

Because the cutting goes so quickly, Hendricks is able to charge about half of what other jewelers charge for making a wax model. For class type rings, his fee averages about $150. With such a competitive price, orders have been increasing steadily since the company acquired the Techno machine. Class rings are not the only rings being produced on the mill, however. Hendricks is also getting a lot of short-run jobs. Wax models for these jobs run anywhere from $35 to several hundred dollars. The rings themselves cost $25 if they are sterling silver. Gold is charged by the gram weight. With Hendricks' process, very nice personalized rings become an affordable item for many organizations. In contrast, custom and short-run pieces produced from hand carved wax models cost start at about $500 because it costs almost that much to produce the wax model alone.

Hendricks has made thousands of rings on the Techno mill and it has proved to be as reliable as he hoped. "It has been operating perfectly, seven days a week for over a year," he says. He has adapted the mill to include a fourth axis, giving it the rotary milling capability to cut letters around the circumference of the ring. To do this, he physically unplugs the y axis and plugs a rotary axis into the opening. The CAM routines he uses are still three-axis programs but this machine configuration allows them to simulate four-axis milling.

After he had configured the Techno machine and CAM system to cut wax ring models, Hendricks put together an instruction manual for his employees that took them step-by-step through the use of the system. When the local reseller of MasterCAM software saw it, he proposed that Hendricks sell his adaptations as a complete system. Hendricks liked the idea and named it Create-A-Ring, which is now available on his web site (www.create-a-ring.net) and from MasterCAM software dealers. "Create-A-Ring includes the indexing head, the holding fixtures, the cutters, 50-60 pieces of clip art, and enough wax to cut 18 rings," Hendricks explains. Create-A-Ring sells for $1,250. "Basically once someone has a Techno machine, MasterCAM software, and my package, they have everything they need to make rings except the casting capabilities," Hendricks adds.

Currently, he is targeting the education market primarily. "If a school has casting capabilities, the students can use my package and make their own rings right in class. Or they can take the wax model to a local jeweler or send it to me for casting," Hendricks says. "If a kid can make a ring, we have taught him a skill. He can go out into the real world and get a job in mold factory or in aerospace industry."

By configuring a CNC machine to cut wax ring models, Bob Hendricks has achieved two excellent outcomes. He has given his own business, Hendricks Manufacturing, a significant competitive advantage, causing sales to grow tremendously. Second, he is giving others the tools and instruction to make their own rings, and perhaps to expand from there into a job or career.

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