Stone setting method
AssigneeThe Swatch Group Research and Development Ltd
InventorElias Laforge
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for assembling a stone on a setting support, the stone being cut to exhibit a table, a crown, a girdle and a pavilion, including the steps of: providing a substrate coated with a pattern including an electrically conductive layer covered with a resin layer, the pattern having an inner contour delimiting a hole through the coated substrate and an outer contour corresponding to the outer contour of the desired setting support; removing the resin layer; after dissolution of the resin layer, positioning the stone in the through hole, the stone resting on the electrically conductive layer; and electrodepositing a metal layer on the electrically conductive layer to form the setting support, in order to make the stone integral with the metal layer.
Claims12
A method for assembling a stone on a setting support, the stone being cut to exhibit a table, a crown, a girdle and a pavilion, comprising the steps of:
- providing a substrate coated with a pattern comprising an electrically conductive layer covered with a resin layer, the pattern having an inner contour delimiting a hole through the coated substrate and an outer contour corresponding to an outer contour of a desired setting support;
- removing the resin layer;
- after of removing the resin layer, positioning the stone in the hole, the stone resting on the electrically conductive layer;
- and
- electrodepositing a metal layer on the electrically conductive layer to form the setting support, in order to make the stone integral with the metal layer.
The method according to claim I, wherein the provision of the coated substrate comprises the steps of:
- coating the substrate, by physical vapour deposition, with the electrically conductive layer;
- depositing a photosensitive resin layer on the electrically conductive layer;
- and
- applying a photolithography process to the resin layer such that resin remaining after photolithography is delimited by the inner contour and the outer contour of the desired setting support.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.