Polishing pins get trapped inside gold jewellery where nobody can see them. Before FIDM, they were dug out by hand — and roughly 5% still slipped through. Here is what changed on the shop floor once the machine arrived.
In gold jewellery manufacturing, jewels are polished in a washer machine using small magnetized pins, with powerful electromagnets at the bottom. The pins are tiny — 2mm long and 0.5mm in diameter — and during tumbling they can lodge inside the small pores of a jewel and stay there.
Once a pin is inside, nothing about the piece looks wrong. It passes visual inspection, it goes on the counter, and the iron only surfaces later — when a customer complains, when the piece comes back for exchange, or when a retailer pays gold rate for weight that was never gold.
The problem, before FIDM existed
The industry’s answer was to remove the pins by hand. An operator worked through the batch piece by piece, hunting for something 2mm long buried in a pore, with no way to know whether a given jewel contained one at all.
It was slow, it tied up skilled people, and it did not actually work. Even after manual testing, around 5% of pieces still carried a defect through to the customer.
What changed after the launch
The same batch of jewellery, handled two different ways — before the Ferrous Particle Detector Machine, and after it.
Operators searched each jewel by hand for a 2mm pin, with no indication of which pieces were even affected.
Every piece is scanned automatically in under 3 seconds as it moves along the conveyor.
Around 5% of defects still reached the customer after manual inspection.
Sensitivity down to 2.0mm × 0.25mm catches iron under 1 mg — including pins the eye and the hand both miss.
Even when a pin was suspected, finding it meant probing the piece and risking damage.
A camera-based locating system pinpoints the exact position of the pin on a real-time photograph.
Inspection needed experienced staff, and throughput was limited by how many of them you had.
An Android touchscreen interface means non-specialists can run it with no training — up to 10× less manpower.
Retailers buying back old gold had no way to verify it before paying gold rate for it.
Every incoming piece is certified at the counter before the transaction is made.
Defects surfaced after the sale, as complaints, returns and disputes over weight.
Defective and clean pieces are segregated on the conveyor before anything leaves the floor.
Where it earns its place
Three points in the gold supply chain where the machine is doing real work today.
Manufacturers
Installed as a quality gate straight after the tumbling and polishing line, so no contaminated piece reaches dispatch or a vendor.
Retailers
Used at the old-gold buy-back counter to verify what is actually being purchased, protecting both the margin and the customer relationship.
Hallmarking Centres
Runs as a pre-certification check at volume — the installed base certifies over 20,000 kg of gold every day.
The result, in numbers
Every part of the machine answers a problem from the floor
None of this was designed in the abstract. Each capability exists because a jeweller ran into a specific wall.
Ultra Sensitive Sensor
The pins that cause the damage are 2mm long and 0.5mm wide — far below what a hand check or a weighing scale can resolve.
Sensitivity of 2.0mm × 0.25mm detects iron under 1 mg, so the smallest lodged pin registers.
Camera-based Detect Locating System
Knowing a jewel is contaminated is only half the job. Operators still had to find the pin, often probing and risking damage to the piece.
A real-time photograph pinpoints exactly where the pin sits, so it can be removed cleanly the first time.
Artificial Intelligence
A jewellery factory floor is electrically hostile — polishing motors and the electromagnets in the washer machines throw off interference that fools a plain sensor.
AI filtering cuts failure detection by 90% even in noisy environments, so the reading holds up next to running machinery.
High Speed Conveyor Design
A fast test is wasted if someone still has to sort the batch by hand afterwards — the bottleneck just moves down the line.
Pieces travel the conveyor and defective ones are segregated from clean ones as they are scanned.
Intuitive Android-based Touch Screen
Tying quality control to a handful of trained specialists caps throughput and stops entirely when they are on leave.
An Android touchscreen interface any staff member can operate with no training — and up to 10× less manpower on the task.
Adjustable Height
Bridal sets, thick bangles and layered haarams do not fit through a fixed scanning gap sized for thin chains.
Scanning height adjusts up to 7cm, so double-sized jewels go through the same machine (dual scan model).
Compact & Light Weight
Neither a working factory floor nor a retail counter has a spare corner for a large inspection rig.
A 1450 × 400 × 200mm footprint that fits into an existing line or sits behind the counter.
Online Remote Drive
A machine down in a regional workshop used to mean waiting days for an engineer to travel out to it.
The machine can be serviced and monitored from anywhere in the world, so most issues are resolved without a site visit.
IOT 4.0 Compatible
Owners running several branches had no way to see what was actually being scanned, or whether the check was being done at all.
Machine data is stored online and viewable from a mobile app or the web, across every shift and location.
The two machines doing this work
Both models run the same detection; the difference is throughput and the space you have for it.
V4.0 Standard
| Checking Time | 3 sec/component (Dual scan) |
| Dimensions (L×B×H) | 1450mm × 400mm × 200mm |
| Power | 50Hz, 230V, 1 Phase, 60W |
| Operating Temp | 0 to 40 °C |
| Motor Speed | 100 Rpm |
V4.0 Compact
| Checking Time | 6 sec/component (Single scan) |
| Dimensions (L×B×H) | 850mm × 450mm × 200mm |
| Power | 50Hz, 230V, 1 Phase, 60W |
| Operating Temp | 0 to 40 °C |
| Motor Speed | 100 Rpm |