Every woman in this living world wants to have at least one gold and diamond jewellery in her lifetime. Might not be of any need, still how diamonds are made is something worth reading. There is a lot of things which elaborate how a crystal on kimberlite comes out in the form of the shining solitaires or tiny diamonds of your jewellery.

How Diamonds are Made- an Overview

Here we will mainly highlight the complete processing of a piece of diamond- from the very beginning of its life. How a diamond takes birth, it’s mining, cutting, and polishing, and the way you wear it- stay with us till the end to know all of these.

The Journey Begins- How a Diamond is Born?

It seems unbelievable to hear that something sophisticated like a diamond is the hardest material on the earth. Actually mother nature has made it so. Diamonds are born in mantles in the time of volcanic eruptions, under extreme heat and pressure. But the diamond crystals don’t stay open to the fire. A very hard stone, named Kimberlite, protects them during the explosions. As a result of these tough situations, diamonds come out so strong that it can cut glass sheets also.

Mechanisation Start- Diamond Mining

Before going to the mechanisms, we first must get to know what are Primary Deposits and Secondary Deposits. Primary deposits are simply those crystals of diamond which come up to the surface level of kimberlite. And from the broken down kimberlite, diamonds some time stay in the rivers and other waterbeds to settle down. Then, these pieces are the secondary deposits.

There are several popular ways of diamond mining. A brief description of the processes are as follows:

Pipe Mining:

Under this segment, there are two most common ways of mining- one is Open-pit Mining, and another is Underground Mining. Open-pit mining is where the pit is broken by blasting once the sand and rocks are removed from over it. Then, machines extract the broken ore at the primary ore crusher site. Underground mining is the traditional way of diamond mining which has been in use since the very beginning. Here the process starts from the surface and miners go mining though the earth crust till they reach the kimberlite pipe. The process continues in two simultaneous tunnels, while the broken ore is in the first tunnel due to blasting, its accumulation is in the second tunnel. Then the collected ore goes for further processing.

Alluvial Mining:

This process is basically for the secondary deposits. Due to rain and other natural calamities for a prolonged time, kimberlite pipes in the very surface of the earth often get eroded. As its outcome, rough diamonds start to flow with the water. As these diamonds remain naturally in the gravel layer of water, there are wall-like structures on the riverbed to collect the amassed gravel to collect diamonds.

Marine Mining:

It is another kind of mining which also takes place underwater. Specialised ships with huge crawler and other technology are there for these tough tasks. Crawlers go deep inside the water to collect gravel through hoses and flexible pipes.

So far, these are the most known mining methods under diamond processing. Now we will head towards the Processing.

Diamond Processing- Step by Step

After all steps of mining primary and secondary deposits, collected ore and gravel are now under processing. This whole process consists of multiple steps as follows:

• Crushing
• Scrubbing
• Screening
• Separation
• Recovery & Cleaning
• Cutting & Polishing
• Assorting & Packaging

Crushing

Once all the mined particulars are taken to crushing site, primary crushers break this diamond-carrying ore and gravel into smaller pieces not bigger than 150mm. Sometimes a secondary crusher, often called as roll crusher, needs to be brought into the sight. As a result, bigger pieces of ore can be broken into even smaller pieces, as per requirements.

Scrubbing

This is the process where the crushed ore pieces are washed thoroughly in order to remove any sort of impurity, loose dirt, or excess materials. It is need as now these pieces will go for screening where uncleaned pieces of ore can create problems.

Screening

In this mechanism, broken diamond ores are sized under vibrating screens. Here wet screening is extremely popular. In this case, the rough ore is already from the scrubbing, hence they are wet. So, wet screening particularly excludes the chances of controlling dust. For this purpose selecting the exact screening panels is extremely important so that the products come properly and in the demanded sizes. While the process takes place, pieces smaller than 1.5 millimetre get out automatically as extracting such smaller pieces isn’t cost-effective.

Separation

Now those diamond-bearing ore pieces are taken to the separation plant. Here, ferrosilicon powder, in addition with water, mixes those screened ores in a specific ratio. After that, the solution comes to a cyclonic separation plant where external force comes into action, once the solution topples inside. Thus, the external force results in the separation of the elements inside, making the ones wither higher density concentrate at the bottom. This makes diamonds accumulate at the bottom of the container.

Recovery & Cleaning

Once the concentration is formed rich in diamond, it is recovered from the cyclonic separation plant. Three main processes are used for the post-processing to check different quality slabs- fluorescence, susceptibility, and luminescence. These processes help separate diamonds apart from other dense elements in the mixture. An acid solution is made using specific proportions for cleaning the rough diamonds thoroughly, After numerous times of rinsing, the diamonds are sent forward.

Cutting & Polishing

Here comes a grand part of the whole journey of a diamond, where rough diamonds go for cutting. According to different colours, quality, and purity, there are several steps of diamond cutting. Extremely precise craftsmanship and meticulous mechanisms are there which the brands use to cut diamonds for ages. There is a rumour we have been listening to for decades that ‘diamonds cut diamonds’, and it is true. Specialised processes like cleaving, sawing, etc. are there to remove the first rough elements from the main and much smaller usable pieces of diamonds.

Later, the ‘bruting’ process creates beautiful edges, making the girdle of a diamond. There are 18 main facets of a diamond in the table, culet, pavilion and bezel. Faceting first makes these main facets, followed by the cutting of the other 40 facets in star, upper and lower girdles. During this process, the machine also polishes the facets accordingly with the cutting process simultaneously. After all the cuttings and polishing, all the pieces of diamonds come to a boil in an acidic solution for an ample amount of time. At the end of the boiling, after removing any dirt or stain, fresh diamonds come out of the solution, ready for studding in jewellery articles.

Assorting & Packaging

There are different parameters of diamond assorting- according to size, and according to quality (4C’s). So, after assorting, diamonds are now in packets in a definite size range, as per requirements. Now these packets are ready for sending to the B2B marketplace, where several countries like Singapore, India, China, Australia, USA, Thailand, etc. are leading. Dealers from these countries buy diamond packets in bulk and sell to wholesalers, and jewellery manufacturers around the globe.

These are the steps through which diamonds are now ready for use as loose or mounted in jewellery items. At La Marque-M, we only use certified natural diamonds, and 14kt or 18kt hallmarked gold to manufacture our unique minimalistic gold and diamond jewellery products.