The first projects focused on abrasive sawing, bruting and yield optimisation of diamond.
In the field of yield optimisation WTOCD played a pioneering roll. From the start there was a joined project on optimisation techniques together with the University of Namur, supported by the government. Afterwards the focus shifted to 3D reconstruction of rough diamonds with the aid of image processing. This lead to several products containing the results of these ongoing studies, namely, Solid, Merlin and AutoMark.
Different sorts of bruting machines were developed by WTOCD. One of the major breakthroughs was the use of stroboscopic light to examine the diamond in process. This gave the industry an economical advantage over other worldwide competitors. If hand bruting is almost absent in industry today then this has a lot to do with the quality of the current WTOCD/Comdiam bruting machines. The EOS-project resulted in a completely new concept of bruting. The finish and the accuracy of the girdle are not comparable with anything else today.
The research in automatic polishing resulted in the development of the Octopus polishing set-up. The industrial version, developed together with Verhaert Design, is now wide spread in the industry.
In the field of laser machining first the expertise was built on the
physical process of laser interaction with diamonds. In de early
90’s the idea grew to combine the efforts of the rough analysis team
together with the laser knowledge into a 3D laser machine for
diamonds. The result was Solid, an acronym for Scanning and
Optimising Laser Integrated Device.
Today this is still, worldwide,
the only laser machine capable of real 3D-machining.
WTOCD was one of the co-designers of the Flanders Brilliant. We improved the look of the model and improved the accuracy of the cutting process by rearranging the order in which the facets were polished. More recent work is kept confidential because of patent issues.
The focus in all projects is moved to intelligent software. There is a continuous growth of software-integrated devices. Besides embedded software development (Hearts and Arrows, EOS, SOLID, Lumisense, ...) there is also desktop software development. The topics are simulation of the cutting process, custom model designer, brilliant cut properties and several others.
BE0889920: Werkwijze en inrichting voor het snijden van sierstenen
Filing date: 11/08/81
Publication date: 11/02/82
Inventor: Bosschaert, Hendrik
Family members: ZA8104886, US4425900, IL0063392, GB2082100, DE3130721, CH0652064
BE1009003: Werkwijze en inrichting voor het slijpen van edelstenen
Filing date: 20/12/94
Publication date: 01/10/96
Inventor: Schouwenaars, Jozef
Family members: WO9619318, EP0799110, ZA9510553, US5816896, RU2150366, IL0116316, DE69512535, AU4168896
BE1014212: Werkwijze en inrichting voor het bepalen van de hoek tussen facetten van een transparant object
Filing date: 05/06/01
Publication date: 03/06/03
Inventor: Verbeke Johan; Blanchaert Maxime; Cooke Peter
Family members: WO02099359
BE2002/0427: Werkwijze en inrichting voor het onderscheiden van edelstenen
Filing date: 05/07/02
Publication date: 07/01/04
Inventor: Claus, Patrick
Family members: EP1378748
BE2004/0559: Werkwijze voor het onderscheiden van kleurloze en bijna kleurloze diamanten en opstelling voor het uitvoeren van deze werkwijze
Filing date: 05/07/02
Publication date: 07/01/04
Inventor: Claus, Patrick
Family members: EP1657544A1, US7277161