At one of Sergey's clients factory in Surat , we were taken to the planning department. There were a few medium and large rough diamonds being planned with Helium Rough. This one I found to be quite amazing. The stone was heavily included with 44 black inclusions that the scanner had plotted. It would have seemed impossible to cut more than a few ¼'s and 1/2s as the inclusions were so large, but as you can see they managed to fit 2 quite large stones in: 1.55ct SI2 and 1.14ct VS1, the material was better colour. These are worth more than 3 times what the 3.80ct I3 stone that was also possible.

That's me holding the rough in-front of the Helium Rough scanner. You may have noticed there are more screens than scanners; it took 3 hours to plan that stone, and most of that time the operator is not sitting with the scanner – this is another one of the innovations that Sergey has bought to the industry. One very expensive scanner can support up to 5 users on separate screens which are networked throughout the factory with free ‘viewers' for checking progress and inclusion positions etc, as well as the licensed planner software that these guys drive.

Here Sergey is clarifying that light from windows can produce very good sparkles. He asked us if the light from the overhead tubes was more intense than the cloudy day light from the window. We all thought the Fluoro tubes were more intense, but Sergey showed us that the reflection on the spoon from the window was actually much more intense. Try it.