“The PUK welding equipment and technology provide access to new creativity and benefits many metal-processing industries. Personally, I have been working with PUK welding for 11 years and I’m still discovering new possibilities of using the technical and aesthetic capacity of the machine.”
“The still-new PUK technology of fine welding literally brought a revolution in goldsmithing. Yes, I say it all the time even after the 16 years, I consider the PUK machine and especially its new 5th series a genius invention and significant innovation, greatly benefiting the general jewellery industry. So it’s not just goldsmithing, that would be a small range.
Besides the common goldsmithing materials, such as gold, silver and platinum, the PUK fine welding equipment also allows welding of non-traditional metals like titanium, steel or niobium. It is also possible to combine metals, steel with copper, with silver and titanium – steel and titanium using an additional silver welding wire, also silver with aluminium, with copper and titanium. This means entirely new possibilities of creative work and the use of metal colours and new surface treatment of metals.
While conventional goldsmithing joining equipment worked exclusively with flame for thousands of years, the new PUK and laser technology can perform new limited “cold” joining of metals and welding “in two fingers”, also without protective borax, which is replaced here by protective argon, and without subsequent cleaning in acid, rinsing, etc.
The PUK welding technology is not a universal joining system, but it can be used also for conventional soldering. One of the particularly popular auxiliary work is fixing of the parts to be joined before the actual soldering. Fixing of parts in several welding points, which no longer requires laborious and stressful wire binding. Your work will become calm and convenient.
The basic principle of welding technology has not changed in 16 years, but the range of newly developed technical capabilities of the new PUK 5, the fifth machine in a row, is enormous. Not only is it possible to set the fineness of the welding pulse, where the time was limited to 8 milliseconds for machine 2 and only 0.5 milliseconds for the recent machine 5, but also the percentage of the pulse strength. Here you can weld a 0.25mm silver wire. This also applies to other materials that can be selected on the touch scale. The same way that all smartphones are controlled.
If I had to describe the past models compared to the recent 5th series, it would be something like this:
The PUK welding method significantly facilitates basic tasks of common goldsmith work, helps with soldering – setting, fixing of soldered parts, often completely replacing soldering, especially when repairing gold and silver chains, repairs with a stone that does not have to be removed (I recommend protecting the stone with common technical oil).
It greatly simplifies the repair process by omitting cleaning tasks required by flame soldering. PUK welding significantly helps goldsmithing and the PUK machine will surely become the basic equipment of every goldsmith’s workshop.
The PUK welding equipment and technology provide access to new creativity and benefits many metal-processing industries. The wide range of possibilities of PUK welding still exceeds the current utilization methods and waits for further discoveries by creative users in the arts and creative industries.
Personally, I have been working with PUK welding for 11 years and, during that time, I have been designing production and material procedures mainly for the use of the PUK method in my work, largely based on the deliberate selection of the processed materials – steel and titanium. From the very beginning, i.e. with the 2nd series machine, like today, I have been discovering new possibilities of utilizing the technical and aesthetic capacity of the machine, which can still surprise me. The characteristics of the new method is probably best described by the following famous quote by my colleague from Barcelona, Jura Golub, taken from an interview: I don’t know how I did it before without PUK!”