0
Sep 19, 2015/ Off Comments / in Laser Cutting / by

Diamonds are one of the most precious and loved materials of all. Every natural diamond was formed long before dinosaurs roamed on Earth, with the youngest diamond believed to be about 900 million years old and the oldest about 3.2 billion. Symbolizing power, strength, and beauty, this material—the hardest in the world—was primarily obtained as a rough stone from India. Modern diamond mining as we know it started in the 19th century in South Africa. At present, around 80% of rough diamonds are obtained from mines located in Botswana, South Africa, Russia, Angola, Namibia, Australia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Rough diamonds are sorted on the basis of their natural characteristics, like shape, size, color, cut-ability, and quality, before being used as industrial diamonds or as gem diamonds. They pass through a series of processes, including planning and marking, cleaving or sawing, bruting or girding, and polishing. The planning part was formerly done manually by skilled workers who would examine the rough diamond for inclusions and other impurities or defects. Depending on this, they planned to get the best part out of it in terms of weight and clarity, and placed marks on it with a pen to guide the following process. Another manual process was kerfing of the marked rough stone, wherein the sharp edge of a diamond was used to cut the stone. With the invention of some advanced tools, sawing or cleaving was done by diamond powder-coated blades. Bruting is the process in which two diamonds are set on opposite axels and their vigorous rotation gives a rough shape to pre-planned stone. The final stage involves making different facets and polishing the diamond.

Read more: Cleveland Ohio Laser Cutting: Laser cutting transforms the diamond processing industry