WaxJet vs. Resin: Why WaxJet 3D Printing Is the Better Choice for Jewelry Casting
As more jewelry makers move toward digital tools, 3D printing is quickly replacing old methods like mold carving and wax injection. It’s now a key part of both prototyping and lost-wax casting in modern jewelry production.
Among the many 3D printing technologies, two stand out for jewelry: resin 3d printers (like LCD or DLP) and waxjet 3d printers. Resin printers are more affordable and easier to access, so many small workshops and independent designers start with them. But while they seem like a good deal at first, they often come with hidden costs—failed prints, casting issues, and extra time spent fixing problems.
Wax 3D printers, on the other hand, are made specifically for jewelry casting. They use real casting wax, offer very stable printing performance, and work perfectly with traditional lost-wax casting setups. Even though the machines cost more upfront, they save time, reduce errors, and produce better results—especially for professional or high-volume production.
In this blog, we’ll explain why waxjet 3D printing is the smarter long-term choice for making jewelry patterns. We’ll also compare it with resin printing across key areas like materials, print quality, support structures, and casting reliability.
A Simple Overview of Resin and Wax 3D Printers
What Is a Resin 3D Printer?
Resin 3D printers are high-precision machines that create detailed parts by curing liquid resin layer by layer using ultraviolet (UV) light. They’re known for producing smooth surfaces and capturing fine details, which makes them popular in jewelry design, dental models, miniatures, and product prototyping.
There are two main types of resin 3D printing: LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and DLP (Digital Light Processing). Both use UV light to harden resin, but the way they create each layer is different.
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LCD 3d printers shine UV light through an LCD screen that masks each layer. They’re more affordable and widely used in desktop setups.
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DLP 3d printers project the entire layer image at once using a tiny mirror array, which means they’re often faster and produce sharper details, especially for small parts.
Resin printers are great for high-detail work, but they also come with downsides—like tricky supports, messy post-processing, and issues when it comes to casting metals. In jewelry production, these trade-offs become more noticeable, especially compared to wax-based printers.
What Is a WaxJet 3D Printer?
WaxJet 3D printers — like the Flashforge WaxJet 510 — is professional machines designed specifically for making high-precision wax models used in jewelry casting. They work a bit like inkjet printers: multiple heated nozzles carefully spray tiny droplets of melted wax onto the build platform, layer by layer. Each layer is then cooled or smoothed to create clean, sharp details.
This printing method produces wax patterns with excellent accuracy and a smooth finish. The printed models can go straight into the traditional lost-wax casting process without needing extra polishing or adjustments. Because of their reliability, high level of detail, and compatibility with standard casting workflows, waxjet printers are widely used in professional jewelry factories and are considered the best choice for mass production.
Wax Is for Real Production, Resin Is for Small Batches
One of the biggest differences between wax and resin 3D printing comes down to the materials they use — and that directly affects how easy they are to cast, how consistent the results are, and how reliable the whole process is for jewelry making.
Wax Material: Built for Mass Production
WaxJet 3d printers use true castable wax materials, engineered specifically for lost-wax casting. These materials exhibit excellent dimensional stability, thermal performance, and mechanical toughness, making them ideal for mass production environments. For example, Flashforge's proprietary purple wax offers the following key advantages:
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Outstanding Dimensional Stability: With a minimal shrinkage rate of just 1.1%, printed models maintain precise geometry, reducing post-processing and ensuring consistent results.
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Thermal Stability: Unopened wax materials can be stored for up to 5 years, and opened spools can be used for approximately 20 days under standard industrial conditions—perfect for batch production planning.
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Low Thermal Expansion: Prevents shell cracking or blowouts during burnout, ensuring a smooth and safe dewaxing process.
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Tough and Flexible Wax: Offers sufficient mechanical strength for manual gemstone setting or fine structural details.
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Zero Ash Residue: The material burns out cleanly, leaving no contamination on the investment shell or the final metal surface.
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Seamless Workflow Integration: Wax models can be mounted alongside traditional injection wax parts on the same casting tree, using standard parameters for burnout and casting.
Resin Material: A Semi-Industrial Alternative with Limitations
Although some resins are marketed as 'castable,' they are still synthetic polymers—and they come with several major drawbacks when used for jewelry casting:
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High burnout temperature: Resin requires extremely high temperatures (700°C–850°C) to fully burn out. This increases the risk of the shell cracking or even exploding during the casting process.
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Ash residue: Resin often leaves behind ash or carbon, which can cause surface issues like black spots, porosity, or rough finishes on the final piece.
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Complex burnout process: Resin models can’t be cast together with traditional wax models. They need a separate casting schedule with customized temperature settings, which adds complexity to production.
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Special investment powder required: Resin casting usually needs specific investment powders and a higher water-to-powder ratio. This not only raises material costs but also results in weaker, more fragile molds.
In comparison, wax-based 3D printing materials are made for casting. They integrate directly into standard lost-wax casting workflows — no extra steps, no special materials, and no surprises. For jewelers looking for consistency and reliability, wax is the safer, more professional choice, especially for high-volume production.
WaxJet Prints Finer Details Than Resin
In fine jewelry manufacturing, precision and detail aren’t just important—they’re essential. Many designs include delicate features as small as 0.1mm to 0.5mm, like micro prongs, intricate filigree, tiny lettering, or sharp edges. This is where wax 3D printers — such as the Flashforge WJ530 — truly shine, delivering industrial-grade accuracy that meets the demands of professional jewelry production.
Let’s take a closer look at how waxjet compares to resin-based 3D printers (LCD/DLP) across several key performance areas:
1. Minimum Printable Feature Size
Waxjet technology is optimized for sub-0.1mm feature reproduction, ensuring even sharp edges and micro-structures are faithfully rendered. For example, the Flashforge WJ530 achieves a dimensional accuracy of ±0.04 mm at 20 mm scale, making it suitable for ultra-detailed jewelry parts.
In contrast, LCD/DLP resin printers often struggle with features below 0.3 mm, which may result in clogged, rounded, or blurred geometry, especially in areas like micro-prongs or recessed reliefs.
2. Surface Finish Quality
Waxjet prints deliver naturally smooth surfaces and crisp edges. The WJ530 operates at a native resolution of 2900 × 2900 × 1700 DPI, with a layer thickness of just 15 μm, ensuring high-fidelity reproduction straight out of the printer.
Resin printers, while capable of fine detail, often produce visible layer lines and stepping, especially in curved areas or on sloped surfaces — adding more post-processing work.
3. Small Text and Logo Performance
Wax 3d printers can reproduce micro-text and logos with clean, no-jagged edges, maintaining the designer’s original intent. Fonts remain sharp, even at small sizes.
In comparison, resin prints tend to exhibit bleeding, blurring, or excess resin pooling in tiny font areas, making it harder to achieve consistent branding or lettering on the final metal piece.
4. Curved and Hollow Geometry
Wax models maintain design accuracy on curved or hollow structures, avoiding surface collapse or warping. Resin prints are prone to uneven shrinkage or surface distortion, especially in unsupported thin-walled or domed regions.
5. Post-Processing and Polishing Needs
Waxjet parts often require little to no polishing, and can be cast directly, saving labor and preserving delicate details. This is because support material is a dissolvable wax, which leaves smooth contact surfaces.
Resin prints, however, typically use rigid support structures, which must be manually removed and sanded—often leaving visible marks and risking part breakage, especially in thin areas.
Even after casting, wax models preserve sharp corners, clean edges, and true-to-design proportions. On the other hand, resin models tend to suffer from thermal distortion during burnout—especially in high-stress zones like prongs, sharp tips, or engraved areas.
This makes waxjet printing the preferred choice for high-end custom jewelry, such as engagement rings, letter pendants, insignia badges, and other designs where every micron matters. From micro-level fidelity to post-casting accuracy, waxjet consistently outperforms resin printing for fine jewelry production. Its unmatched ability to reproduce intricate details makes it the only true fit for professional, high-precision manufacturing workflows.
Support Structures Matter: Why WaxJet Makes Post-Processing Easy
One of the most overlooked yet critical aspects of 3D printing in jewelry manufacturing is the support structure system. For high-precision wax models, support placement and removal can directly affect casting quality, surface finish, and production efficiency.
Resin Printers: Manual Support = High Risk, High Cost
Resin-based 3D printers (LCD/DLP) typically rely on manual support design, which poses major problems in jewelry applications, like Incorrect support placement, poor support geometry, manual support removal, designers without casting experience.
In complex designs—such as filigree rings or intricate pendants—removing resin supports can take hours and may still leave residue that affects the final metal piece.
WaxJet Printers: Automated, Dissolvable, Hassle-Free
WaxJet printers, such as the Flashforge WaxJet series, offer a fully automated soluble support system specifically tailored for jewelry manufacturing:
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Supports are made of a different wax material that can be fully dissolved
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No residue or surface scars remain, eliminating the need for manual grinding or polishing.
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Support generation is handled by software algorithms, ensuring optimal placement with minimal user input.
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The high degree of standardization reduces training time, lowers the risk of error, and ensures consistent results across batches.
With waxjet printing, post-processing is as simple as a cleaning step—no tedious sanding, no risk of snapping fragile elements, and no need for manual guesswork.
Besides, Flashfroge's WaxJetPrint software, which offers:
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Automatic support generation optimized for casting.
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One-click model repair tools to detect and fix mesh defects.
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Encrypted file sharing to protect intellectual property during team collaboration.
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Streamlined tree assembly features for fast post-print grouping.
This seamless software-hardware integration ensures that each print is production-ready, reducing turnaround time and increasing output reliability—key priorities for large-scale manufacturers and premium jewelry brands.
Machine Consistency & Production Scale
Resin 3D printers often struggle with consistency, especially when used for batch production. Common issues include:
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Exposure settings can vary significantly between machines—even within the same brand—making it difficult to apply a single print profile across multiple units.
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Different resin formulas require manual recalibration each time you switch materials, adding to setup time and trial-and-error.
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LCD screens tend to degrade quickly, often showing uneven light distribution within just 1–2 months of regular use.
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Resin materials typically have a high shrinkage rate (4–8%), leading to noticeable dimensional inaccuracies, especially in thin-walled or detailed parts.
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Unused resin must be filtered and stirred before reuse, as it can separate or deteriorate when left overnight.
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First-layer failures are common due to inconsistent bed adhesion, platform leveling issues, and temperature sensitivity.
In contrast, WaxJet 3D printers are built for industrial-scale use:
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One set of parameters works reliably across multiple machines.
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Durable hardware ensures long-term operation without frequent part replacement.
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Machines are designed for continuous 24/7 production.
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Excellent dimensional stability means whether you print 1 or 100 pieces, every model comes out with consistent accuracy.
In short, resin printers are fine for prototyping—but when it comes to reliable batch production, WaxJet is the better solution.
In the long run, profitability and scalability in jewelry wax model production depend heavily on whether the equipment is professional, stable, and compatible with existing casting workflows. Waxjet 3d printers aren’t simply the more expensive option—they’re the smarter investment. With purpose-built precision, industrial-grade reliability, and seamless integration into traditional processes, wax printers offer a more cost-effective and future-proof solution for serious jewelry manufacturers.
