Diamond used on Diana Memorial

The memorial fountain for Princess Diana in Hyde Park, London was opened officially by the Queen in July.

The design consists of a granite 'ring' some 210 m in length which has water entering at the highest point and then running down both sides before entering a 'reflecting pool', from which the water is pumped back up to the top. 

There are various features along the fountain - cascades, pools, steps, etc - which have been created by texturing the stone or by adding jets of water.

The stone chosen for constructing the Memorial was De Lank granite from Cornwall, which is hardwearing and non-porous. Also De Lank is unique amongst UK granites because of its light colouring, which will highlight the sparkling quality of the water as it circulates around the memorial.

As would be expected, diamond tooling played a major part in constructing the fountain and ensuring it was completed on time. Sophisticated modelling and scanning techniques were employed to create a 3-D model of its oval shape. From this, the fountain was divided up into 550 individual blocks ranging from 250 kg to 1.5 tonnes in weight.

The electronic files containing this data were sent to S. McConnel & Sons in Northern Ireland who were chosen to carry out the machining of the blocks. Two CNC Terzago saws and a CNC Omag miller-router were used to cut the complex shapes using specialy developed software originally written for plastic injection moulds used to make mobile phones and hi-fi systems.

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