It is common to see different pieces that are made with “laminated gold”.
Therefore, it can be said that laminated gold is a piece made from a base of brass, steel, copper, or another material, which is covered with several layers of gold of different carats, depending on the manufacturer, they can be layers of 10K, 12K, 14K, 18K and 24K.
The layers can vary between 3 and 6 layers of the precious metal (depending on the type of manufacturer), and the thickness of each layer can also vary. In total, the amount of all gold foil must be greater than 1/50. It is important to note that “legal” rolled gold must contain at least 5% gold of at least 10 karats.
When laminated gold is made, a wire or sheets of this material are obtained, and from this different pieces of jewelry will be created, which will have the “appearance” of authentic gold but at a cheaper price.
Rolled gold applications
Rolled gold, necklaces, watches, bracelets, pendants, rings, and earrings, among other pieces are made, which is made of 24K gold or pure gold, would be more expensive and not very accessible to the general public.
Although many people may associate laminated gold with jewelry, the truth is that laminated gold has many practical applications, ranging from coin making, through dental pieces to electronics and the aerospace sector, since being alloyed with other metals, it acquires the necessary consistency for any use. Let’s see some known applications of rolled gold:
Coins
For many years, gold has been used to make coins, some of which are highly collectible. Many of them are made with pure gold, but others are made of pieces of another material, which are covered with gold sheets to give them a higher value.
Odontology
Due to its properties, gold is present in dentistry through the production of artificial crowns and dental pieces, most of which are made with a base material that is later covered with gold sheets. As a curious fact, we can mention that in ancient times dental pieces of pure gold ( 24K ) were molded.
Medicine
Gold is used in research and medicine, with cell surface antigen discoveries, for example. Some prosthetics for body parts such as arms and legs use gold in their manufacture (although it makes them very expensive and therefore not as common).
Computing
Gold is also applied in this area, especially in the production of memory chips, where it is included in the form of small sheets of gold. It is a material that is a good conductor, but being so expensive, its use is quite limited, so only very small amounts of gold are found in each piece.
Aerospace industry
The visors of the space helmets that the astronauts use, usually have small sheets of gold, since this offers them special protection against radiation. On the other hand, some space telescopes and probes use gold, an example of this is the James Web Space Telescope, which uses a layer of gold on its beryllium mirrors, which allows it not to lose photons in its observations, allowing it to have a greater reflectivity percentage (98%).
