High end watches have had sapphire crystal faces for a while. Why not diamond??
Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
181–190 of 511 posts
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incredible, great info. We are now living in the Diamond Age.
Well, not quite. They were making diamond windows from atmospheric carbon dioxide at room temperature in household machines or machines you could rent at the post office. We’re a ways off from that yet.
Also the whole aerostat thing where you make a diamond "balloon" full of vacuum that floats in air, using the strength of the rigid diamond to avoid it being crushed and popped.
I'm no materials-scientist, but I did some napkin-math on that once and it came out to some ridiculously-thin-sounding layer of diamond.
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#183That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price. De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applicat…
This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!
Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the value of diamonds has always been their rarity and cost. Historically, for married women this allowed them some financial strength and safety net. Of course as time goes on that function becomes less useful, but the idea has still stuck around a bit. I predict people will turn to other gemstones, or will stick to "natural" diamonds and maybe even get them certified and stuff, producing another artificial…
You omit functional value referred somewhat euphemistically as "portable wealth." See also: why doesn't the US circulate 1000 dollar bills?
It's not, though. This is old, but it's a classic: https://archive.ph/VdR8C
The short version is that it's very tough to sell diamonds. You're much more likely to get fleeced or get arrested than you are to get a fair deal.
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!
Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.
I know this is a bit of a throwaway comment, but I'd never thought of diamonds for eyeglasses.
And, honestly, that would be really really cool.
Yeah, there are other materials with better refractive indices and that are tougher and cheaper and dont shatter. Sure.
But if we can get diamonds down to something that could be made into lenses for the (very high end) retail market, man, that would just be so cool!
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is certainly good news for lasers. Many people don't realize how good diamonds are for this. Transparent with a 65% higher refractive index than glass, and 8x the thermal conductivity of copper. And completely scratch-proof!
Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.
You probably don’t want more conductive lenses, though.
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#187How do you determine that the diamonds are 'more beautiful'?
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
They never had any value, apart from specialized ie glass cutting tool. Only when DeBeers realized they could push some fictious heavy marketing 'to prove your worth to woman you are asking to marry' for those shiny stones nobody wanted to buy, people who didn't know better got manipulated into buying them. They are supposedly very common in universe, and probably in deeper Earth too. Correction is healthy and benefi…
I think diamonds are used in some lathes as cutting tools. So suprising thats not more common. I though diamonds strength and iirc its heat tolerance would be attractive to the folks who cut stuff.
They're not that heat tolerant. They're fantastic heat conductors, but they'll burn away into carbon dioxide (via carbon monoxide). The temperatures needed to do that are high, around 900C, but that's not that high. Angle grinder sparks can be hotter than 1000C, as can the edges of carbide tools.
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#189A friend recently mentioned an online jewelry retailer called Frank Darling [1], which sells both natural and lab-grown diamonds.
They have a pretty interesting business model: they're mostly online, but also offer in-person appointments with a designer and offer to 3D print pieces in resin before producing them.
Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined
#190That's a good article. The whole history is there. The commercial side has made huge progress, too. Look up "diamond making machine" on Alibaba. You can buy a high-pressure, high temperature six sided press for about US$200,000. A chemical vapor deposition machine is about the same price. De Beers, the diamond cartel, has an R&D operation, Element Six. They sell synthetic diamonds for lasers and other exotic applicat…
How will they maintain their jewelry business ? It feels like Sony CD-R drives in the Playstation era.
The same way vinyl still sells.