De Beers Group Ignite, the diamond giant’s research arm, has introduced a new high-volume melee screener that can offer instant verdicts on as many as 2,500 diamonds an hour.
The AMS Micro was designed to automatically separate natural diamonds from lab-created diamonds and other materials by examining their different growth structures. De Beers claims the system has a 0% false positive rate (i.e., it never mistakes lab-growns for naturals).
The device was developed for diamonds in the 0.6 mm to 0.9 mm size range. It uses a “robotic arm” feed-and-dispense function, so it requires no specialist expertise or outside supervision to operate.
“AMS Micro represents an important breakthrough for the industry,” said Sarandos Gouvelis, head of De Beers Group Ignite, in a statement, “as it greatly improves screening of the smallest sizes of diamonds by automating this process with very high levels of speed, accuracy, and reliability…compared with existing manual processes.”
The first AMS Micro was set to be delivered to the Swiss office of leading diamond manufacturer and De Beers Group sightholder KGK at the end of February.
(Photo courtesy of De Beers Group)
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