b'Guiding You ThroughUncharted WatersFor GCALs owners, teaming up with a larger partner gives it the ability to expand overseas without sacrificing quality or giving up a central tenet of its businessthe money-back guarantee that comes with each of its grading certificates. Angelo says GCAL first started having conversations with Sarine in 2016, when it launched Sarine Color and Sarine Clarity. He says all analytical processes at GCAL currently are mecha-nized, except color and clarity grading. The Sarine Color and Sarine Clarity machines were shipped to GCAL headquarters in New York in late February/early March and were expect-ed to be fully operational and in use by press time, though that does not mean all GCAL grading will become automated overnight. For us, what weve always talked about is, this is going to be an incremental approach to implementation, Angelo says. Were not going to throw out everything weve been doing for 22 years. The machines, essentially, will become one of the multiple graders who look at every diamond that comes into the GCAL lab. Nothing is just going to blindly fly out the door without human involvement, he says. After a certain point in time, which Angelo says is, not that far off, GCAL envisions placing the automated color and clarity grading machines in their customers factories, where they could give dia-monds a pre-grade to provide an expectations baseline for when the stone is submitted to GCAL. For now, there is one big, shiny wrench in the plan when it comes to machine grading diamonds in factories without lab intervention: man-made diamonds.At GIA, differentiating smaller natural and lab-grown diamonds from each other, and from diamond simulants, is automated as part of its Melee Screening Service. Any diamonds that GIAs instruments, including its iD100 screening device, refer for further testing have to be examined by scientists and technicians, who make the final call.Pritesh pushes back on the idea of grading diamonds exclusively in a factory, not only because of the need to distinguish between lab-grown and natural but also because of the need to test for various treatments.Moses adds, Treatments pose a significant reputational risk to the industry; GIA can detect known treatments and identify new methods because of the expertise of our research team and the sophisticated instrumentation available to us to examine millions of diamonds every year. The identification of new treatments and the detection of known methods is at the heart of GIAs mission. Without the work we do, the industry risks losing consumer confidence.GIA, however, does envision another future, one that involves an automated diamond grading system that is an evolution of its melee sorting system, but with significant enhancements to accommo-date larger diamonds. That type of thing is going to be available in the very near future, Pritesh says, while Moses adds jokingly, Im an old man and itllPatents Pendinghappen for me to see. For Sarines part, Block acknowledges that, as of right now, any tests used to determine if a diamond is lab-grown or natural still needcgc reationsto happen in a lab, but Sarine is working on machine-learning technol-ogy to both distinguish between man-made and natural diamonds andQuality that sells itself.to identify treatments. When they will be ready is unknown.FRANCOContinued on page 59 STELLARINATIONAL JEWELER 57800-431-1606Fax 800-880-3198 sales@cgcreations.comcgcreations.comCGC Designs protected by U.S. Copyright. All rights reserved.'