Quote Originally Posted by prodigy View Post
You are verifying my point as you tell me I'm wrong. The plate IS wearing out. The DIAMONDS are not. We are in agreement. Somewhere along the lines of our discussion we created confusion. Diamonds are doing 1 of 2 things in this scenario. They are fracturing, or they are coming loose from the plate. There are no particles that can erode them, not even an ark...
No, we aren't in agreement. Yes, diamonds CAN and DO "erode" as you put it - actually it's abrasion, not erosion, but that's semantics. How do you think they are cut into faceted shapes? They are abraded using - wait for it - diamond dust! Or did you think that all the facets just happened to lie along the stones' natural cleavage lines? There is also a significant difference in their ability to be abraded based on the direction that they are abraded. This can be as much as a two order of magnitude difference. This is one of the reasons that the diamonds are carefully examined and oriented before they are faceted as jewels.