Tobias Teigelkötter is showing a smoked quartz with a tiny but perfectly legible engraved writing. These letters, with a size of only 1 mm, could not be engraved with conventional techniques. Nor could the true to the original handwriting on the other sample, a rock crystal. The key to these perfect markings is a technology which has been fascinating goldsmith and jewelry designer alike for more than a decade now - the laser. It is not, however, the well-known and expensive UV laser source. It is the compact and cost-effective laser jewelry marker EasyJewel - standing in his studio. The EasyJewel is a system which was originally designed for marking precious metal. And if there is somebody like Tobias Teigelkötter who has so much knowledge about the craftsmanship of stone engraving and laser technology, completely new promising applications may arise.

Three generations of jewelry tradition in Werne
The jewelry designer, together with his wife Christin, has been running the Teigelkötter studio in the 3rd generation. His grandfather Heinrich Teigelkötter, a master watchmaker and master optician, founded the studio in the historic Tudor style house downtown Werne in 1921. His son Heinz took over the company in 1975 and steadily expanded the range of products - until that point of time when each angle in the house was used to full capacity. In the mid Nineties the studio moved to a new appropriate accommodation not far away. Tobias sister together with a colleague took the opportunity to assume the optics and the hearing aid division. At that time, Tobias Teigelkötter is on his way most of the time, and in 1990 to 1994 he gets trained as a goldsmith and shortly after he came upon the technology which should have considerable impact on his future professional life.

Laser pioneer in the jewelry industry
Shortly after Tobias Teigelkötter started his job with Hans Schindler in Soest, the first manual welding laser from Baasel Lasertech (today ROFIN / Baasel Lasertech) was tested for jewelry production there in 1995. It did not take long for the goldsmith to detect the potential of the new tool and he has been assisting in developing and optimizing the system since then. When the innovation was presented on the occasion of the Inhorgenta and the Basel World, he was sitting at the laser and was demonstrating the possibilities of the new joining technology. Being so much fascinated by the potential of the manual welding laser technique, the goldsmith promptly ordered a system for the family-run enterprise in Werne. However, the laser may not stay for long there, because Tobias Teigelkötter continued his professional training and started to study design of precious stones and jewelry in Idar-Oberstein in 1996 - and he moved with his studio and the laser.

New kinds of settings welded by the manual welding laser
The actual innovation created by the manual welding laser is new kind of setting technique which conceal the precious stone only to a minimum and can get on with complicated shapes. With conventional techniques, the tightening of the setting over the girdle is always associated with a more or less heavy mechanical load of the precious stone. Corners of square stones or shapes with pointed edges are extremely vulnerable to cracks. Now, the laser allows filigree welding of finest sheets very near heat-sensitive precious stones. New kinds of settings could be developed which safely retain the stone between two thin sheets, which has been cut for perfect fitting. After being welded by the laser, the conical edges of the cut fix the Rondiste all along the circle or alternatively, only selectively at a few spots, directly from top and bottom. The rear of the stone remains completely free allowing completely new, filigree and transparent jewelry design, in particular for larger stones.

Extravagant designs using larger stones
Also with laser welding, experience implicates success. Above all, the welding-appropriate design of the setting is decisive, and also the accessibility for neatening afterwards. For Tobias Teigelkötter it really gets exciting when it comes to an extravagant design of a unique piece of jewelry. In case of a Tanzanit he prefers to retire into his studio during the weekend and switch off the phone. There is not so much the risk of hitting the stone with the laser beam by mistake rather than reflexions of the laser beam onto the polished metal sheets of the Fassung might occur. These risks have to be anticipated and avoided.
Also asymmetric rings can be fixed and engraved with the special ring fixture provided by the EasyJewel.
Quelle ROFIN / Baasel Lasertech

The manual welding laser is suited not only for setting stones but also for a wide variety of other applications in jewelry production. Its preciseness and minimal heat input allow to apply claw settings directly onto the stone. Tobias Teigelkötter does all the fixings before soldering. One or two spot welds tack the pieces together, much better than any other joining technique.

Marking lasers replace other engraving methods
In 2003, Tobias Teigelkötter took over the studio from his father who had run the business for 42 years with great success. Acquiring a vacuum induction melting furnace, the new boss integrates the entire manufacturing process of the jewelry including the production of different precious metal alloys in his own shop. Today, almost 100 % of the pieces of jewelry sold are produced in his own studio where two goldsmiths are employed. Modern service via e-mail (showing detailed descriptions and pictures), open houses and an active participation in wedding shows guarantee an increasing client base around the region and beyond.

Laser marking of pieces of jewelry is an essential factor of the success of the studio. Laser technology provides all benefits of a contact-free, abrasion-resistant and permanent marking of most different materials like platinum, gold, silver or titan. Thanks to high speed, ultimate precision and the possibility of deeper engravings, marking lasers have replaced diamond engraving at numerous jewelry manufacturers and jewellers.

Life was different in the first few years of the beginning millennium. When the first providers tested their marking laser systems, in particular the user interface proved to be a great restraint. And Tobias Teigelkötter was swift to assist in optimizing the complicated and intricate operation of laser systems for the use in a goldsmith's studio. High investment costs of the marking lasers, however, impeded the circulation of this technique hoped for. Also the user-friendliness fell short of the customers' requirements. Parts could not be put into position or only with much intricateness by hand, and what is more, the adjustment of the systems sometimes required extensive programming know-how in Visual Basic. New low-cost systems perfectly designed for jewelry manufacture have brought about a change, systems like ROFIN's EasyJewel.

Marking of rings is the main application
The classical marking application surely is inside-ring engraving. Here, the precision of the laser allows for motives which cannot be realized with conventional methods. Facsimiles of handwriting in calligraphic quality with different line widths can be reproduced true to the original. Another outstanding characteristic of the laser is efficiency. A standard engraving with a depth of two to three tenths of a millimeter can be done easily within only a few minutes - including set-up times. This is exactly the distinctive feature which makes the laser the method with the highest performance compared to other systems on the market. Not only the excellent beam quality, as required for efficient and high-quality processing of precious metals, but also the sophisticated complete system solution are the decisive factors. What is more, a flexible ring fixture, as offered with ROFIN's EasyJewel, is absolutely necessary for engraving conical rings or rings designed with gemstones. The commercially available standard fixture which fixes the ring at three spots concentrically, does not take into account the irregular shape of these rings and hence does not adapt the interior surface adequately. ROFIN provides the solution for these applications: a universal centering device.

High-Tech in the goldsmith's studio
In the Teigelkötter studio, the marking laser has meanwhile covered a wide range of applications. Hallmarking can be applied without any mechanical load at the end of the production process at the most suitable spot. For inlay work or channel setting, the laser ablates the material down to a depth of 0.4 to 0.6 mm - without any corner radius as otherwise unavoidable with rotating milling tools. The laser does the marking for all bevel settings just as for the two sheets forming the laser welded setting. For this purpose, the stone is scanned, and the contours are verified.
These parameters make the inner and outer contour lines for the setting.
Tobias Teigelkötter fills idle capacities of his marking lasers with job shop orders - often for near one-line shops: e. g. personalizing high-value hunting knives made of specific steel which can hardly be marked with conventional engraving methods. Or he does some research work finding out some new interesting applications for the laser.