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Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

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Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#291

Post by jdietrich »

nradov wrote: post #153
baldfat wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap titanium bikes are high on my list but I think the killer application is titanium hinges. Springs will last a lifetime. Looks like this is starting to happen alreadt: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html $0.25 for a hinge Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. So anything that shouldn't bend will be better with titanium.

There's very little actual titanium in titanium bike frames. Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much. And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway.

>Most of the cost is in the machining and labor, so I doubt prices will drop much.

I'm not sure why that would be the case. Titanium alloys are only marginally more difficult to work with than aluminium alloys. The tubes are hydroformed and die cut, so the only difference is a touch more die wear. Titanium is a bit finicky to weld, but that can't possibly account for the ~500% price premium over aluminium frames. There's a tiny bit more surface preparation and your fixtures need to be more complex to provide adequate gas purging, but the differences in a mass production environment are quite marginal.

>And the majority of riders seem to prefer carbon fiber anyway.

Carbon is better for competition road bikes, because it offers the absolute lowest weight and can be easily formed into complex aerodynamic profiles. Entry-level bikes tend to be aluminium for cost reasons. For touring and audax bikes, many riders still prefer steel for durability and comfort. Titanium has the corrosion-resistance and light weight of aluminium but the comfort of steel, so it's considered by many to be the ideal material for non-racing bikes, but the cost is often prohibitive.

As far as I can see, the bike industry would be transformed if titanium were to achieve price parity with aluminium.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#292

Post by InitialLastName »

jimworm wrote: post #145
bawse1 wrote: post #68

I think that many of us are missing the main factor in what makes organic diamonds so expensive. Organic diamonds are "desirable". Desire is strong emotion that can defy logic and is pinnacle to the purchase of any luxury item. It is always the same argument when many of us like to compare a luxury item based on its utility rather than its desirability be it $100k tesla vs. $2k beat up honda, $1k iphone x vs. $600 an…

Counting on that for my next startup, artisanal electricity.

Even better, artisinal AI:

Have problem that's hypothetically solvable by AI? Send us some input data, and our experts will send you back a decision based on that.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#293

Post by vanderZwan »

dsacco wrote: post #227
ryandrake wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re taking away a lot of agency from people who prefer natural diamonds. Yes, of course their marketing campaign set off the industry, but the reason it worked is because many people are already predisposed to prefer natural things over artificial things. Predisposed is a pretty strong word. Do you think people are born with a preference for “natural” diamonds? I happen to believe that most preferences you hold…

No, many people are predisposed to like luxury items due to instilled cultural values, not because of an innate utility. But that was part of my point: to honestly criticize the diamond industry, we should criticize the entire market of veblen goods in general.

[flagged]

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#294

Post by dsacco »

vanderZwan wrote: post #293
dsacco wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, many people are predisposed to like luxury items due to instilled cultural values, not because of an innate utility. But that was part of my point: to honestly criticize the diamond industry, we should criticize the entire market of veblen goods in general.

[flagged]

If you're going to leave the debate like you said you would, just do so. But don't reply to my comment with nothing but an irrelevant Wikipedia link - that's extremely dismissive. It's also intellectually insulting, because it presumes that the other party is so poorly informed that the mere mention of a dialectic phenomenon should be enough to enlighten them.

This is not whataboutism because I'm not excusing the diamond industry's behavior by distracting the conversation to irrelevant examples. Instead, I'm generalizing the diamond industry as part of a greater phenomenon to demonstrate that the problem isn't just the diamond industry, it's the way human beings are incentivized to operate with respect to status symbols in general.

Simply replying with that link tells me that you believe my points can be reduced - and similarly dismissed - simply by labeling them with whatever the term is for the (perceived) fault in the argument. That's about as constructive as saying something is an ad hominem without any effort to explain why, or to declare something is fake news without providing more information.

You're not debating in good faith. Moreover, what's the point? You must know you're not going to convince me with a low effort comment sending me to a Wikipedia page describing one of the many possible ways an argument can be fallacious. You didn't even both to explain why it applies (which, again, it doesn't). So why are you even bothering with this?

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#295

Post by philipkglass »

scythe wrote: post #161
baldfat wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap titanium bikes are high on my list but I think the killer application is titanium hinges. Springs will last a lifetime. Looks like this is starting to happen alreadt: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-hinges.html $0.25 for a hinge Titanium is light, but my favorite thing is it is next to impossible to bend. So anything that shouldn't bend will be better with titanium.

I doubt it's happening already. Metalysis currently owns the patent rights to the process and is focusing on tantalum and zirconium (higher profit margins) while working on scaling it up.

Tantalum ore concentrate currently sells for over $150/kg. Making metallic tantalum powder from the oxide is barely interesting even if the FFC process works quite well. Tantalum would remain an expensive specialty metal. Titanium dioxide, OTOH, is closer to $150 per tonne. A cheap process to convert that inexpensive raw material to metal would be one of the most impressive advances in industrial metal production in decades.

There's an ugly licensing fight in the history of the FFC Cambridge process. See the section "Commercial challenges" in this article:

http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf

In 2000 Cambridge University Technical Service issued a sub-license for the technology that British Titanium Plc used for the purpose of producing bulk titanium and titanium alloys. BTi worked closely with researchers from the Fray group (one F of the Fray, Farthing, Chen inventors whose names make up "FFC.")

The US Office of Naval Research issued contracts to BTi for R&D work in 2000 and 2002. In 2002 DARPA started funding more expensive scale-up work also associated with BTi. In 2004 NASA issued an even larger contract to BTi. Cambridge spun off Metalysis in 2002 with another license, but Metalysis didn't seem to be making much progress compared with BTi. In 2005, CUTS revoked the sub-license granted to BTi and made all of the IP exclusive to Metalysis. The license revocation destroyed BTi.

My interpretation: CUTS crippled BTi because Metalysis wasn't making enough progress on implementation to compete against BTi. But CUTS really crippled the whole concept because the experts that had been working for and with BTi didn't want to work with Metalysis after getting screwed by CUTS. Metalysis "pivoted" to tantalum and has failed to make notable progress there, too. Maybe the application to titanium will finally resume progress toward industrialization after the patents expire.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#296

Post by rayuela »

phkahler wrote: post #10
saagarjha wrote: post #3

> De Beers fights fakes with technology as China’s lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems From what I understand, these gems are actually better than natural ones, since they're 100% pure. Maybe it's time to call lab-grown diamonds "real" and mined ones "fake".

>> From what I understand, these gems are actually better than natural ones... Yes, for decades they claimed clarity and purity to be indicators of the highest quality. Now that humans can manufacture them with better specs than nature, they're shifting to claim that "natural" is better. In the end it's a pretty carbon lattice.

Yup, when I doing some research for an engagement ring I read "reviews" on Moisanite arguing that it wasn't as nice as a real diamond because it had "too much sparkle." So I got the Moisanite and my fiance loved and gets compliments on it all the damn time!

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#297

Post by entee »

saagarjha wrote: post #3

> De Beers fights fakes with technology as China’s lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems From what I understand, these gems are actually better than natural ones, since they're 100% pure. Maybe it's time to call lab-grown diamonds "real" and mined ones "fake".

I'm not sure they always have the same color/clarity. I was looking around for diamonds at one point recently (friend's looking to propose) and the synthetic selection didn't seem to go all the way up to the highest end of the scale.

Also I was surprised that the price difference wasn't bigger, in the 1-2 carat range it seemed the difference was maybe 10-20% or so, which is not nothing but not massive.

Could be an artifact of where I was looking however.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#298

Post by falcor84 »

I love these sorts of "is it the real thing" tests. This poses a great economic incentive for the producers to put effort into R&D to advance the state of the art. It's just like how image-based captchas have been incentivizing advances in computer vision.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#299

Post by smileysteve »

dalbasal wrote: post #238
dalbasal wrote: post #232

I'm not sure if this article refers to cubic zirconia, moissanite or some new flavour of human-made diamonds but in either case, this is has been going on for 40 years. The market for diamonds isn't rational, so how it will behave is not predictable. First, the idea that diamonds maintain value is nonsense. This isn't gold or some other mineral "currency." You can sell gold anywhere for close to its spot price. Diamo…

Replying to myself with a conspiracy minded thought.... Now that I think of it, De Beers probably has a strong interest in "fraud" being a problem. If manufactured diamonds are sold as natural, this is fraud. There will be victims, trials, fraud prevention... All good reinforcement that these things, they're not really diamonds. Fake is debatable. Fraud is something that you can get a judge to say. So, back toy initi…

Synthetic diamonds are exactly that. Not cubic zirconia.

Re: Lab-grown diamonds threaten viability of the real gems

#300

Post by ameister14 »

ancap wrote: post #277
ameister14 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't currently have a free market, and most customers definitely do not know the provenance, relative supply or transport/marketing cost of almost anything they buy. They trust food, for example, because the government secures it and regulates it. >What's important is the principle of subjective value--that the buyer and the seller value what they are getting more than what they are giving up--and that can happen…

Even absent government regulation, I still don't see consumers being terribly concerned about the source of their apple. Why? Because the quality of it is reflected by the reputation of the seller. But even if I were to concede the argument for the particular case of food, that does not mean that knowledge of provenance is a prerequisite for a free market. >You need the other things to move away from the necessity of…

>You are suggesting that transparency must pre-exist a free market, I am suggesting that a free market pre-exists transparency, and when necessary transparency will be demanded by the consumers.

The issue, I think, is that we have a different definition for a free market. A free market, by the definition I am using, functions at peak efficiency and is free from monopoly and large stakeholder or government intervention/regulation. For that to occur, the kind of transparency I'm talking about must theoretically be present.

If transparency came afterward, what happened prior would not be perfectly efficient and would be vulnerable to monopolization, intervention or unbalanced deals and so would not, by definition, be a free market.

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