A platinum microwave oven, designed in South Africa by a Cape Town-based company, is set to revolutionise the global jewellery industry while giving the local jewellery manufacturing industry a boost.
South Africa delivers 70% of the world’s platinum resources, yet less than 1% of platinum jewellery is made in the country. The worldwide platinum jewellery manufacturing industry is worth about R7,5billion a year, with the United States, China and Japan being the largest players.
But small local company Hot Platinum believes it can make South Africa a world player with its new invention: a platinum oven, branded the Icon 3CS. MD Ali Brey describes the machine as the world’s most compact and versatile casting solution to melt platinum.
Platinum is one of the most difficult metals to work with as it requires temperatures of nearly 2 000°C to melt. This makes creating platinum jewellery a laborious, costly and time-consuming task.
Small jewellers who have struggled with the traditional jeweller’s torch will now be able to buy the compact platinum oven for about R100 000 and easily manufacture rings and bracelets. It can melt anywhere between 20g and 300g of platinum in less than two minutes.
“Jewellers can easily quadruple their output with this machine, which decreases working capital,” says Brey.
He explained that if a company does just 30 casts with this machine, they would have already earned enough to finance the new oven.
Hot Platinum is the product of a collaboration between the University of Cape Town’s electrical engineering department and the Cape Technikon. The team also received a grant from the government’s Innovation Fund.
The machine can also melt gold, silver, titanium and stainless steel. Despite being on the market for less than six months, orders are rolling in. “Within three years we plan to have sold at least 500 machines,” says Brey.
Although they have a few overseas customers, the majority of their machines have been sold locally. Goldmaster Jewellery in Cape Town was one of its first customers. “This has changed the way we produce jewellery,” says jeweller Graham Miller. “We can now design complicated jewellery on a computer, create the mould, put the platinum into the oven with the mould, and two minutes later we have the ring ready — just waiting for its precious stones to complete the design.”