Belgium’s Scientific and Technological Research Center for Diamonds (WTOCD) says that after more than 10 years of research it has succeeded in developing a technology that fully automates the polishing process.
The WTOCD, the research center of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), said that, as a result, diamonds can be polished 10 to 20 times faster than by hand. A stone that would typically take an entire day can now be polished in one and a half hours using the new technology called FENIX.
Ari Epstein, CEO of the AWDC, said: “This discovery fundamentally changes the diamond polishing process. Today’s wages simply make it too expensive to conduct this labor-intensive job in our country. FENIX puts an end to this, and can therefore be a real game-changer for the Antwerp diamond industry.”
In addition to being fast, FENIX is also extremely accurate and revolutionary in the way it polishes diamond, the AWDC said in a statement. Yves Kerremans, CEO of the WTOCD, commented: “Each diamond has a specific grain, a crystal orientation that has to be taken into account during the polishing process. This grain is in part the reason that diamond polishing is such a labor-intensive process. FENIX is the first technology that makes grain independent polishing possible, and which furthermore increases the speed of the polishing process by a factor of 10 to 20.”
