GIA and off to Surat

After a week of buying in Mumbai, Drena and Tony flew off to Bangkok trade fair. I finished off a bit of buying and did an interview with one of the local trade mags before heading to Surat, 4 hours train ride north, to where all the diamonds are cut.

This was my third time to Surat to work with Mr. Janak Mistry, CEO of Lexus. Janak makes diamond manufacturing machines and designs factory processes. Janak came down with one of the manufacturers who attended the IDCC diamond cut conference that we hosted in Moscow. The three of us went to a presentation by GIA president Bill Boyajian (center left with the shorter Martin Rapaport on the right). There was little news in the presentation. Bill was rather shocked to see me, Martin was pleasantly surprised; “what's the cut geek from down-under doing here?”. Later we caught the 11.30pm sleeper train to Surat and I arrived at the Horrid Day Inn hotel at 4.30am for a nap before pick up at 10.30am.

Note people napping at Bombay Central railway station, and a rain cover over a shopping center, then the new Lexus head office and factory (the 3rd factory).

Lexus

Pictured above is Janak and below is younger brother Uptal (computers). Below is the youngest brother, Kamal (optics), who is working on, my Russian Associate, Sergey's latest OctoNus® product. Helium Rough is the newest scanner that can identify the size and location of inclusions in rough diamonds and plan for cutting around them to produce higher clarity diamonds. The machine was being tested and has the cover off. I have deliberately blurred the image unfortunately because this technology is top secret.

The shot on the right shows a diamond model (brown) on the scanning table. When the polished diamond model(s) have been planned the black circular light thing between the diamond and the screen is a high power laser that burns a small line all around the stone so the sawyer knows where to cut the stone (most diamonds are sawn and 2 polished diamonds are produced from the 2 halves).

Machines for Cutting

Here we can see a rough stone that has been planned using Helium Rough. Two rounds are to be cut around the tiny inclusions. After sawing, the stone would be put on a machine like this one, an auto bruter, which is a type of lathe that has 2 diamonds mounted on the ends of the small steel shafts in very bottom of the top left photo. They are then profiled and shown enlarged on the computer screen above. They are ground on each other until they are fully rounded. Janak is the main supplier of auto-bruters in Surat. Part of his philosophy is to specialize in machines that have computer guidance. These are all hooked into one huge LAN network that enables management control of each step of the polishing program. Sergey's scanner planners are designed with this process control system in mind.

After bruting, Lexus customers use an auto blocker (the next side and plan photo's), This computer controlled machine polishes the main facets on 4 diamonds at a time – each is held on 4 heads that sit on one polishing wheel. Next the stone goes to a hand polisher or Brillianteer, who polishes the final facets and makes precision adjustments using the scanner image shown that is equipped with DiamCalc and ideal-scope software so they can see how the final stones light return and leakage will look after polishing.

A Day at Lexus

Shown above is some experimentation with the new Rapid Ideal-Scope capture set up, some of the Lexus team, the lower ground factory floor, and Janak at work at his desk. The office is very slick and he insists we use the lift; after all that is why they have it for just 3 floors!

On an average day Janak gets many clients asking for specialist help and assistance. Since he is a formally trained engineer (in Germany) and well experienced now in the diamond industry, he is often called upon to solve problems. These two guys had bought the 4 sawn pieces of two rough diamonds for a consultation. 3 of the pieces had developed large inclusions after sawing and they were trying to find out why. Janak showed them a polariscope – a standard gem instrument for checking if there is stress in diamonds. There was no stress in the 3 that had developed inclusions after sawing – but the one that had not did have the tell tale 'tatami patterns'. Janak explained that the inclusions that appeared were the result of a release of the stress – and that is why the ½ with no new inclusions still had its stress color patterns showing up. The answer is to laser saw (burn) so there is no mechanical stress, or cleave (break) the stressed stones parallel to the plane (octahedral) that contains the stress.

Factory Visits

This is a 15ct D IF Hearts and Arrows on my hand that was polished while I was in Surat. And next are a series of photo's of different factories all mixed up for anonymity. What you very quickly learn in this place however is the amazing thirst for knowledge and ways to improve anything and everything. That is why De Beers recently upset Belgian, New York and Israeli cutters and gave so much more of its rough business to Indian manufacturers. These guys are 'manufacturers' – they are not 'cutters' or 'polishers'.

The thirst for new technology and machinery led one manufacturer who was not satisfied with an 18 month wait for a German machine, to simply buy 51% of the company. There are companies with Ramon spectrographs, spectrophotometers and all the lab gear for detecting synthetic and HPHT treated diamonds. There are grading rooms set up with the very best microscopes and intensively trained staff for grading Flawless and VVS1 diamonds using the HRD method; these guys do only 4 to 6 stones a day.

The 2 'blocked out' diamonds in the stone paper have been sawn with a state of the art new laser saw. The black is carbon from the vaporization burning process. Underneath the black are nice diamonds that now just need polishing or as we say 'brillianteering'.

Some Factory Buildings

Another leading manufacturer is into minimalist architecture; he read and researched the styling extensively himself and built a factory with no painted surfaces in the building.

This is one of the first of the new factories built in Surat.

This last factory is run by the only person in Surat with an espresso coffee maker :)

Most of these companies are De Beers Sightholders, i.e. they go to London every 6 weeks to collect a shoe box full of rough diamonds, assorted as best as De Beers can, to share out the desirable and the not so desirable rough diamonds from their mines and those of the mines that are sold through their 'co-operative' (30% and 20% of the worlds diamonds respectively).

Remember that 110 years ago De Beers was originally founded by Cecil Rhodes (as in Rhodes Scholars and Rhodesia) as a miners co-operative. Around 1,000 miners were working the on Big Hole and being ripped off by the European buyers. It was only in the 1930's depression, that the vision of Sir Ernest Oppenheimer led to his purchasing the shares from the miners families; they did not have the guts or belief in diamonds to fund the continued buying of rough. The other investors did not believe the market would rebuild for many years. Oppenheimer did the classic thing – made a big punt – and had to make it work. Within a decade he had employed top advertising and PR guru's and who came up with the famous line – “A Diamond is Forever”. The rest is of course history. BTW the name De beers came from the name of the farm that the Big Hole was found on. There was never a Mr. & Mrs. De Beers.