The intrinsic strength of the titanium wire made it ideal to weave the 24k wire over. After completing the weaving of each cylinder, the stitches are tightly packed. The titanium warp wires are then laser welded into the titanium bezel caps.

While the heat-treatable alloys offer both malleability and hardness, they have their own limitations. "I can solder the wires down and age-harden [the alloys after soldering], but the wire stays much healthier and hardens much more successfully if I don’t' ever completely anneal it with a torch," T Lee explains. That's where the laser welder comes in. "The welder was what really allowed me to do more complicated weave patterns," T Lee says. "I can mix [various alloys] and tack down the ends as I go, so that I only need to age- harden once."

Like laser welders, CAD/CAM has given new meaning to the term "experiment" for T Lee. "With [CAD/CAM], I can run things up the flagpole without putting a huge amount of manual labor intofabricating them,"she says. "I can design on the computer and be able to see it before I have the actual live model made. And I never have to have anything made unless I'm sure it's a good design. There are many designs that draw out on paper one way, and look entirely different when drawn three-dimensionally in CAD. Utilizing CAD gives me an opportunity to realize an entire form before either having a model made by a service bureau or making it the ‘old fashioned’ way—by hand."