Artificial Diamonds

[Zkribbler]

DeBeers will soon be selling artificial diamonds at 1/10th the cost of real diamonds. Interested?
I've always held a fascination for gemstones, and I've always been cheap. This would be perfect for me if I were of a different gender. Nevertheless, someday I may need to buy a wedding ring or perhaps seduced a gullible wench. This will be a godsend.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/29/news/companies/de-beers-man-made-diamonds/index.html

The world's largest diamond miner is doing the unthinkable: Selling stones produced in a laboratory.
De Beers launched a new jewelry brand on Tuesday that features synthetic diamonds, a major reversal for a company that had implored consumers to stick with "real" stones.

The brand, called Lightbox, will offer synthetic diamonds at a fraction of the price it charges for stones pulled out of the earth. De Beers framed the move as a response to consumer demands.

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now," said De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver.

Jewelry from the brand will go on sale in September. De Beers said prices will start at $200 for a quarter carat, and increase to $800 for a full carat stone. The company's natural stones start at roughly 10 times that amount, depending on their clarity and other attributes.

De Beers had been an outspoken critic of synthetic diamonds. Company executives vowed never to sell artificial stones, and it participated in the diamond industry's "real is rare" campaign. It even developed a machine that spots lab-grown stones.

"De Beers' focus is on natural diamonds," Simon Lawson, the current head of research and development at De Beers, told Bloomberg in 2015. "We would not do anything that would cannibalize that industry."

Synthetic diamonds, which can be produced in about 500 hours, share the same physical, chemical and optical characteristics as natural stones. But they are not nearly as valuable.

De Beers has produced synthetic diamonds for years through a subsidiary called Element Six, but it has limited their use to industrial applications.

The new synthetic diamonds will come in pink, blue and white, and the stones will contain a tiny Lightbox logo. De Beers said the logo won't be visible to the naked eye, but it will make the stones easily identifiable as lab-grown.

De Beers said it would invest $94 million over four years to build a new synthetic diamond production facility near Portland, Oregon.

Hmm, a new synthetic diamond production facility near Portland, Oregon? I must start recruiting Zkribbler's Eleven, a band of sophisticated, well-dressed rogues intent on pulling off an impossible heist.

 

[metalhead]

No way. Knowing that the diamond I gave my wife funded a warlord wiping out an opposing warlord is where all the romance comes from. Without that a diamond is nothing!

 

[Lexicus]

I would much rather spend my money on other stuff like expensive liquor than diamonds, whether real or fake. Only way I'll keep a diamond is if I find it myself.

I'm also -with difficulty- resisting the urge to rant about the conditions miners in South Africa are subject to.

Aesthetically my favorite stones are sapphires and emeralds anyway.

 

[Synobun]

Diamonds are pretty ugly.

But I support the switch to lab grown diamonds.

 

[civvver]

It's like a car or in some cases even an iphone, or designer brand clothes- you don't use it cus it's worth the money but because everyone knows around how much you paid for it, ie to show off status. If you literally cannot tell the difference between lab diamonds and real then sure, why not?

 

[Samez]

Synthetic diamonds are quite common for several decades now.
They are usually not used for the jewelry industry because they wouldn't be accepted as the status symbol they are now (see metalhead's post)
There was a time when synthetic gems were new and valuable but now they are completely worthless.

 

[uppi]

Synthetic diamonds are quite common for several decades now.

Yes, but the ability to grow diamonds as good or even better as the best mined ones is fairly recent. And that being more economical than mining them is even more recent.

Diamond is a pretty awesome material and high-quality diamonds have interesting scientific applications. So the more the mined diamond market is undercut and money flows into the perfection of diamond growth processes the better. I hope that this will shutdown most of the mining business in the not so distant future.

Apparently, De Beers is also seeing the writing on the wall and are trying to get themselves a share of the new market before the old ones disappears.

I really dislike the idea that mined diamonds should be considered more valuable than lab-grown ones in any way. Considering the problems that come with mining them, they should be considered a material of the past.

 

[plarq]

I think the right name is "synthetic diamond". And it is real, and usually better than the natural, mined ones. The CVD growth technique could produce flawless diamond. It is similar to the fact that the synthetic motor oil is better than the natural, "dino" ones.

 

[innonimatu]

To be fair, most of the mined diamonds these days probably do not come from war zones. I haven't researched, but don't Russia and Canada have vast mines?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Canada indeed has diamond mines, and their diamonds are routinely disparaged by companies like De Beers as "substandard quality."

 

[zxcvbob]

I bought my wife Charles & Colvard "moissanite" (gem quality silicon carbide) ear rings last year. I think they were the size of 1/2 carat diamonds. They are almost as hard as diamonds, and they are prettier. Cheaper too, but not that much cheaper.

 

[Bootstoots]

Diamond is a really interesting material made out of the most awesome element. I'd love to have me some cheap artificial diamonds.

I've read that diamonds will burn, but I've never gotten the chance to put it to the test before. It's metastable at atmospheric pressure and can be converted to graphite without burning at elevated temperatures. It's also a wide-bandgap semiconductor. I hope there's a dopant that both makes a pretty color when added to diamond and makes it conductive!

 

[FriendlyFire]

No way. Knowing that the diamond I gave my wife funded a warlord wiping out an opposing warlord is where all the romance comes from. Without that a diamond is nothing!

Blood for the Blood GOD !
Its only a compressed carbon, which is a very common element

 

[onejayhawk]

Synthetic diamonds are quite common for several decades now.
They are usually not used for the jewelry industry because they wouldn't be accepted as the status symbol they are now (see metalhead's post)
There was a time when synthetic gems were new and valuable but now they are completely worthless.

I hate the term synthetic diamond. Manufactured diamonds are real diamonds.

I will contradict metalhead. They are not used as jewelry because comparable natural stones are still significantly less costly (at least in money). There will always be a niche where natural stones are preferred, but most purchasers care for cut, color, clarity, carat weight, and cost before nature of origin.

There is a very interesting application, called a diamond anvil cell (DAC). It is not yet practical to grow diamonds with greater optical transparency and size than are found naturally. That should change in the next decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_anvil_cell

 

[Zkribbler]

. Manufactured diamonds are real diamonds.

 

[Kyriakos]

1/10th of the price? Do synthetic diamonds actually use material that is 1/10 as rare (or even finitely found) as real diamonds?

Besides, actual cut diamonds take a lot of skill to create, cause you start with the stone in its natural state. An artificial diamond will (i suppose) be cut from the start, so it is even more ridiculous to charge 1/10 of so large a price for something like that.
1/100 would be far more logical.

 

[Zkribbler]

1/10th of the price? Do synthetic diamonds actually use material that is 1/10 as rare (or even finitely found) as real diamonds?

Nope, both natural diamonds and manufactured diamonds consist of carbon--and often impurities to add color.

The price difference is because manufacturing diamonds take less effort than mining natural diamonds.

 

[Kyriakos]

Nope, both natural diamonds and manufactured diamonds consist of carbon--and often impurities to add color.

The price difference is because manufactured diamonds take less effort than mining natural diamonds.

So why charge so much as 1/10 when:

1) you can produce as many of these diamonds as you want
2) you don't have to employ (at any rate as many) specialized people to cut and refine as with mined diamonds

?

 

[uppi]

1/10th of the price? Do synthetic diamonds actually use material that is 1/10 as rare (or even finitely found) as real diamonds?

Besides, actual cut diamonds take a lot of skill to create, cause you start with the stone in its natural state. An artificial diamond will (i suppose) be cut from the start, so it is even more ridiculous to charge 1/10 of so large a price for something like that.
1/100 would be far more logical.

No, when you grow diamonds, they don't come pre-cut out of the CVD-Machine. You still need to cut them like you need to cut mined diamonds when you want to use them as jewelry.

The material is not even the expensive part, because the real cost of growing diamonds are the machines, the energy consumption and the maintenance.

I have no idea whether 1/10th is a fair price, but you cannot just compare the base materials needed to get an idea of how expensive it should be.

 

[Kyriakos]

No, when you grow diamonds, they don't come pre-cut out of the CVD-Machine. You still need to cut them like you need to cut mined diamonds when you want to use them as jewelry.

The material is not even the expensive part, because the real cost of growing diamonds are the machines, the energy consumption and the maintenance.

I have no idea whether 1/10th is a fair price, but you cannot just compare the base materials needed to get an idea of how expensive it should be.

I am not claiming they come pre-cut, but actual diamonds need to be examined by various professionals by hand -prior to the latter stages of cutting - (to identify if they can be used for one largish diamond, or two smaller ones, and if they can be of various cut types or just the more standard ones, and which one is optional and of what worth by the end etc). That is a part of the production cost. I have to suppose that it isn't likely to have this part feature in synthetic creation, cause it would mean more chaotic process of producing the material, no?

There are many stages from getting the (natural) diamond rock, to having a finished diamond, and some of those are unlikely to be there with synthetic diamonds, is what i am saying.