Bringing the Bling Parisian Style

Arthus-Bertrand  (www.arthus-bertrand.com) is a Parisian producer of such things as military badges and medals, decorations, and jewelry. With a store on the Rive Gauche, it is the kind of place where the word “exquisite” (or there it would be exquis) is spoken with a high level of appropriateness, which brings us to the tricked-out Jaguar S-Type that the company’s Eric Fauriaux, a jeweler, customized. Essentially, there is the addition of several hundred pieces of jewelry—paste, in this case, but bling just the same—to various parts of the body work.

Arthus-Bertrand has been using ArtCAM software from Delcam since 1997. ArtCAM is software for artisans, not engineers, for the programming of engraving and routing. The firm now also uses Delcam’s PowerMILL CAM for machining applications and its CopyCAD for reverse engineering for 3D models for rapid prototyping and other applications. For the S-Type they deployed ArtCAM JewelSmith. They started with digitized files of various elements of the vehicle, then modeled extra details.

According to Patrick Chichportich of Arthus-Bertrand, “One of the major advantages of using ArtCAM for this type of work is the ability to create very rapidly many different kinds of models. A single model can be adjusted as often as you wish to fit any shape on the car: knobs for the hand-brake lever, tops of automatic gears, features on the console, and so forth.”

The programs for the three- and four-axis machining performed was generated from the Delcam CAM systems. Then the paste jewelry was added to make the car sparkle.