According to a report in 1sn.ru, quoted by Rough & Polished, Russian mining giant Alrosa uses robots “to sort diamonds by color, quality and shape.”
The robots are versatile and fast, according to the report, and can sort up up to six diamonds per second. Andrey Petrov, head of the mechanized sorting section of the Yakut Diamond Trading Enterprise of Alrosa, is quoted as saying that, “before the diamonds arrive for mechanized sorting, they undergo chemical purification, dimension control and arrive directly at the mechanical sorting section, where they pass the sorting stage on automatic machines.”
Experts, who remain unnamed in the report, claim that while the human-based step-by-step sorting takes “quite a long time, today it has been significantly accelerated and allows you to bring diamonds to the market faster and better.”
