Diamond bagging is the process where the diamonds are grouped on the basis of their size. The diamonds are counted and then bagged, according to product requirements for any given pattern of jewellery. This is a skillful task where the probability of errors creeping in is ever present. Manual bagging leads to inaccuracies in the counting, sorting and bagging of the stones. Any increase in demand means putting more skilled people on the job, the nature of the job results in employees suffering from back pain, eye strain and fatigue.
Way back in 2007, a dedicated team was formed to build a machine to automate the diamond bagging. The idea was to build a machine that could pick and bag single diamonds. Initially, pins were used in the machine to pick up the diamonds, where the pin wears out frequently. Then vibratory bowls were used instead of pins and a sensor for counting the diamonds, chutes for holding the diamonds, pallets were used for bagging.
This machine can bag 16000nos/day as against the requirement of 40000nos/day, and the rest was bagged manually. The appropriate diamonds (for e.g. VVS1, VS1, SI2, SI2GH, and SI3) are loaded in the servo chute and according to the requirement, the diamonds in the upper chute will be transferred to the lower chute through linear vibrator and the sensor will ensure the number of diamonds in the lower chute. The robot will pick the diamonds from the lower chute and it will place in weighing balance and the diamonds are loaded to the pallet for bagging and finally the label is manually pasted on the bag.
Another machine was built with capacity of 24000nos/day to avoid manual bagging completely. The number of chutes was increased to meet the requirement and also an additional weighing balance was introduced to reduce the idle time of the machine. In this machine, the pallet was replaced by blister packing, since the pallet has to be cleaned every time before loading, to avoid the mixing of various qualities of diamonds. The collection of diamonds from the pallet is a tedious job and this is made easy in blister packing. An ink jet printer is to be incorporated in place of label printer which will print the bagging details on the blister packing instantaneously.