Ballas (or shot bort) is a diamond industry term for roughly spherical shards of non-

gem A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, a ...

-grade diamond, mostly mined in Brazil and South Africa. A ballas is an aggregate of diamond grains concentrically arranged with radiating structure into a roughly spherical stone with a fibrous texture and without throughgoing cleavage planes. Tougher and more difficult to cleave than crystalline stones, ballas are used as

industrial diamonds Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, b ...

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Diamond industry {{mineral-stub