London: De Beers yesterday announced the launch of its latest lab grown diamond detector, capable of screening 2,500 of the smallest melee in an hour.

The AMS Micro (Automated Melee Screening) uses robotic technology to work with stones as small as 0.001-cts, a significant improvement on the 0.0032-cts capacity of its predecessor, the AMS.

The new instrument automatically separates natural diamonds from lab-growns and other materials with a zero per cent false positive rate and a referral rate of less than 3 per cent. It represented “an important breakthrough for the industry,” De Beers said in a press release.

The AMS Micro uses a “first-of-its-kind robotic arm” together with an automated feed and dispense function, which De Beers says can save users five days on average for every 100 carats screened.

Sarandos Gouvelis, head of Ignite, the company’s innovation team, said, “It comes to market following years of dedicated research and development by our leading scientists, working in collaboration with industry participants, and will be a game-changer for diamond businesses that deal in large volumes of melee diamonds.”

The first AMS Micro instrument will be delivered to the Swiss office of mines-to-retail diamond company KGK later this month.