1st International Industrial Diamond Conference

International Industrial Diamond Conference takes off

The first International Industrial Diamond Conference held in Barcelona in October 2005 got off to a flying start with almost 350 delegates drawn from 34 countries turning up to witness a wide-ranging programme of presentations which covered all the application areas of diamond in industry. The conference was such a success that the Advisory Committee of Diamond At Work, organizers of the conference, has already decided that the conference should continue as a biennial event with the next one being held in April 2007 in Rome Italy. Click here for details 

The Barcelona conference was held over two days and featured a total of 86 papers, with the presenters coming from 18 different countries – Austria, China, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine and the USA. This demonstrated the truly international nature of this conference.

The main conference papers were presented over four parallel sessions covering the following main subject headings:

• Stone & Construction
• Oil/Gas
• Metalworking
• Precision Industry
• Materials
• Electronics
• Detectors
• Optical & Thermal

The individual papers reflected this wide application range and included subjects as diverse as oil well drilling, diamond wire sawing, machining of aerospace components, silicon wafer polishing and diamond X-ray detectors.

There were four keynote speeches given at the beginning of each morning and afternoon session. Three were from people inside the industry, Christian Hultner of Element Six, Louis Pope of US Synthetic and Tanya Fratto of Diamond Innovations, who all spoke of the importance of technological innovation to drive the business forward. The fourth speaker, Gary Geaves of B&W Loudspeakers, was from outside the industry and gave an insight into how the use of diamond as a component in his company's products had given them an advantage over competitive products.

Another important feature of the conference was the Educational Session, which took place on the afternoon of the pre-registration day, and covered a wide range of topics and was well attended.

One reason for the success of this conference was that it focused strongly on its main purpose which was to provide a technical forum for the promotion of the industrial diamond industry in general. It was strictly non-commercial, thus highlighting the main aims of Diamond At Work which are essentially to promote the value of diamond in applications, through key advantages such as performance improvements and environmental benefits.

All the participants were manufacturers of equipment, tools or diamond products or engaged in active research into these areas. The conference provided these people with a suitable platform to allow direct interface and sharing of ideas between the diamond industry and universities and research establishments.