Patent ID: 7891095

Claim:
A method of producing in one and the same operation a jewelry or objet d'art product made of precious metal, having a complex geometry and a sufficiently high precious metal content to allow the product to be hallmarked in accordance with existing laws, the method comprising: building up the product stepwise in layers from a precious-metal-containing powdered starting material, and wherein (a) an FFF (FreeForm Fabrication) CAD/CAM fusion process is utilized in which the powdered starting material is added in layers and, by means of control by the CAD/CAM programming of a laser beam or electron beam, a layer is caused to undergo at least partial metallurgical fusion before the next layer is added, which results in binding of each layer and each immediately preceding layer, where the product is a solid material but leaves powdered material unprocessed there between; (b) the powdered starting material has a precious metal content of 60 to 90%; (c) the product comprises a number of individually uninterrupted parts or links which are movably but inseparably coupled together with one another; and (d) the powdered material used in production during the CAD/CAM-controlled fusion process is left unprocessed within each powder layer in an area between the parts or links that are movable relative to one another, to a distance from one another that exceeds the maximum diameter of the grain size of the powdered material.