The word QC on a factory website usually means a person with a loupe glancing at a finished piece before it goes in a bag. In a workshop that ships wholesale, QC is a sequence of inspection gates placed between production steps. Each gate exists so that a casting defect never wastes an hour of setting labor, and a setting defect never gets plated. Buyers who understand what those gates check are also buyers who can write QC terms into a purchase order that a factory can actually meet.

Gate 1: Right after casting

The piece is rough, sprued and unpolished, which is exactly when it is cheapest to reject. The inspector looks for:

  • Visible porosity on the visible faces; internal porosity on high-value pieces goes to X-ray or micro-CT.
  • Complete fill - no mis-runs at the tips of prongs or the ends of filigree.
  • Dimensional accuracy against the CAD: shank width, ring size, bezel seat diameter.
  • Flash and investment residue that should have been removed in the acid dip.

A piece that fails here is recycled. It does not move to the finishing bench, because an hour of filing on a defective casting is an hour thrown away.

Gate 2: After hand finishing, before stones

Now the piece is polished and ready for setting. The inspector checks:

  • Surface finish under magnification: no leftover file marks, no swirls from buffing, no deep scratches that plating will highlight.
  • True shank roundness and correct ring size on a steel mandrel.
  • Stamps and hallmarks: purity mark (925, 14k, 18k), maker's mark, and where required the assay office stamp, all deeply and cleanly struck.
  • Structural integrity: prong walls are full thickness, bezel wall not thinned by over-filing.

Gate 3: After stone setting

This is the gate that catches the defects customers actually complain about in wear. The setter themselves does a first pass; a separate inspector does the second:

  • Stone security: a dental tool or wooden pusher against each prong; the stone must not rock.
  • Prong tips are rounded and smooth, not sharp or snaggy.
  • No metal covering the stone table; no girdle chips visible under 10x loupe.
  • Pavé rows checked with dental floss thread - it should not catch on any bead.
  • Seat is clean: no polishing compound trapped under the stone.

Gate 4: After plating, pre-pack

Plating changes the appearance, so a final inspection is needed after the rhodium or gold flash is applied:

  • Uniform coverage: no dull patches, no rinse water spots, no missed corners inside a shank.
  • No plating solution residue or fingerprints visible on the surface.
  • Stamps and hallmarks are still legible under the thin plate.
  • Clasp function on bracelets and necklaces: repeated open and close cycles, jump rings closed.

Weighing, counting and the paperwork

After the visual gates, each piece is weighed on a precision scale and the weight is logged against the design spec. A ring that comes back 10% lighter than spec usually means the bench over-filed a shank or thinned a bezel; that piece is pulled even if it looks fine, because the structural margin is gone. Stone count is verified against the BOM: a pavé band specified at 24 stones ships with 24 stones, not 23 plus a tight-looking spot. Carat weight of the center stone is recorded separately, matched to the lab report where one is issued.

Packaging itself gets a final look: tarnish-prevention paper in the bag, the right size tag, the SKU sticker on the correct box. Wholesale buyers receiving a shipment with mixed tags on identical SKUs are receiving a packing error that should have been caught at this last gate, long before the carton left the building.

The final record

At the end of the line, each batch carries a QC log: carat weight of stones used, piece count, any rejected units and the reason, and a signed-off inspection date. That log is what a buyer audits when they ask for QC documentation, and it is also what a factory uses to spot recurring defects - if prong tips keep failing on a particular design, the bench adjusts the seat depth, not just the inspection.

What buyers should ask for in writing

When you negotiate a wholesale program, ask for the inspection gates by name rather than for good quality. Specifically: do you inspect after casting? After setting? After plating? And do you provide a batch QC log with the shipment? A factory that can answer each directly is running the process; a factory that cannot, even if the pieces look good on day one, will eventually ship you a batch with a problem you will find in the retail store. We run these four gates on every order and keep the logs available for buyers to review - the same discipline behind the work shown in our portfolio.

Rhodium plating, which gives white gold jewellery its bright finish, is covered in the Wikipedia article on rhodium.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I verify a factory before placing a bulk order?

Request a production video, business license, export records and a paid sample run. A factory that accepts a 50-piece test order is usually a real manufacturer.

What payment terms do you offer?

30% T/T deposit with the balance against the bill of lading. This protects both sides on first orders and can move to net terms after a track record.

What is your normal reject rate?

3–5% under 10x loupe inspection for cast and set pieces. Defective units are replaced free in the next shipment.

Where is the factory located?

Wuzhou, Guangxi, China—the core lab-grown and moissanite manufacturing cluster. Shipments go via Guangzhou or Shenzhen ports.