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Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

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Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#351

Post by thomasahle »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #27

I'm planning on buying an engagement ring very soon and my own plan (as someone who has never done this before!) is to get a good lab grown diamond but spend more money on the metal in the ring. You can make a gem stone in a lab but until we become a Kardashev II civilization we won't be making any sufficient quantity of gold in a lab. If I buy a good loose lab grown diamond will I be able to find someone who will fi…

> If I buy a good loose lab grown diamond will I be able to find someone who will fit it into a high quality gold ring?

I hear many jewelers are not big fans of this. It's like a customer who bought their own steak to a restaurant and asks the chefs to cook it at a discount. It's not like the jewelers don't know where to buy cheap stones online. Some jewelers are just happy to get the business, but expect others to sneer a bit.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#352

Post by kuschku »

IgorPartola wrote: post #321
kuschku wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've similarly experienced bad scratches whenever my phone and my keys come into contact, hardened steel may still be able to cause scratches?

Your keys are by no means hardened steel. If they are steel at all (most are brass or silver/zinc), they would be mild steel. If they were hardened they would be really difficult to cut. The harder you make a steel the more brittle it gets. Think about what happens when you slam a file with a hammer vs a large nail.

Considering how easy it is to break keys in the lock, I'd say they're definitely more brittle than malleable?

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#354

Post by kuschku »

_yb2s wrote: post #331
kuschku wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've similarly experienced bad scratches whenever my phone and my keys come into contact, hardened steel may still be able to cause scratches?

This should not be possible with any type of modern phone screen. Do you perhaps have a plastic screen cover that is scratched? Or key metal could be deposited on the screen and just need to be scraped off

No cover, just straight up gorilla glass victus.

And it's not just key metal deposited on the screen, there are deep grooves cut into it.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#355

Post by Nursie »

kortex wrote: post #335
LanceH wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burn hydrogen to make water. Is that artificial water? Or is it forever artificial water? Is all water that mixes with it artificial water? Is all water now artificial since it has mixed with human made water? While the basic definition seems to be merely "man-made", I would say it holds there is some underlying distinction between the natural and artificial. Natural light vs artificial light -- the two are distinctl…

That's not what makes things artificial vs natural. Artificial vanillin is "more vanilla than real vanilla". A natural vanillin molecule is indistinguishable from fully synthetic vanillin from crude oil. The latter is still called "artificial flavor".

Artifical vanillin is not the whole package though, as there are other compounds in natural vanilla that make up the flavour, so it doesn't reflect the full product. "Natural" vanilla extract may also never have seen a vanilla bean, as it could be plant derived, or even from a beaver's ass.

Until the rise of synthetics the perfect diamond had no flaws or impurities. Now the language has changed and apparently it's all about just the right number of imperfections and impurities, though those will also be mimicked in short order (if they haven't been already).

There is a genuine physical reason to prefer 'real' vanilla extract over artificial. Not so much for diamonds.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#356

Post by saagarjha »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #344
Stedag wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s definitely price performant at 6.5 on the mohs scale, sapphire panels are 2-4x more expensive to produce but 9 on the mohs scales so they’re typically only found in watches I bet. At a 10 on the mohs scale diamond is still best for hardness. Maybe the same effect of the prince Rupert’s drop could be induced on a round diamond with an alpha particle beam treatment where you add these ions primarily on the surface…

I'm not exactly a watch nerd, so don't know how true this is, but I hear that sapphire shatters on impact. Or maybe that's just an excuse for people peddling "alternative" materials for their watches? But if it is true, then I'd say that sapphire is a poor choice for mobile phones. IME I'm far more likely to drop the phone, preferably on some form of hard surface, that to scratch it. Phones are nowadays so ridiculous…

I believe Apple tried to get sapphire for phones screens at some point, but their supplier folded.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#357

Post by jiveturkey »

How long until synthetics are passed off as natural? Or maybe there's already a lot of that going on. Conflict diamonds are already "laundered" so why not synthetic.

> Because it’s so difficult to distinguish between mined and lab diamonds (even for jewelers), diamond grading institutions inscribe LG or Laboratory-Grown on the rim of lab-grown diamonds, visible at 20-times magnification.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#358

Post by dijit »

saagarjha wrote: post #356
vladvasiliu wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly a watch nerd, so don't know how true this is, but I hear that sapphire shatters on impact. Or maybe that's just an excuse for people peddling "alternative" materials for their watches? But if it is true, then I'd say that sapphire is a poor choice for mobile phones. IME I'm far more likely to drop the phone, preferably on some form of hard surface, that to scratch it. Phones are nowadays so ridiculous…

I believe Apple tried to get sapphire for phones screens at some point, but their supplier folded.

They did however manage to get Sapphire on the watch display (at least on the stainless steel LTE edition of the apple watch series 4 and 8, which I'm aware of).

The difference between my watch (which was 4 years old at the time) and a colleagues almost brand new apple watch (without the sapphire) was really telling, is his was lightly scratched on the edges despite him being quite careful, and I was exceedingly reckless with mine as I considered it old- yet there was not a single defect.

That was a major reason for me to upgrade to the LTE of the next version of apple watch that I bought.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#359

Post by ykonstant »

Lucasoato wrote: post #320
biomcgary wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamond eyeglasses? The lenses would still be cheaper than the Luxottica frames.

Luxottica is top tier.

Top tier monopolist that needs to be broken up, preferably with a sledgehammer.

Re: Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined

#360

Post by Terr_ »

IgorPartola wrote: post #322
db48x wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, the scaling works the wrong way for small objects. A vacuum–zeppelin makes a lot more sense than a beach ball.

Exactly. That’s why a cubic meter of air is probably not the right range to look at. Something several magnitudes larger might do better.

Likely, but even a cubic meter is already a large step up from the scales in the book, ex:

> Each aerostat in the dog pod grid was a mirror-surfaced, aerodynamic teardrop just wide enough, at its widest part, to have contained a pingpong ball.

It doesn't say they aren't relying on some kind of down-thrust, but at that point I'd wager it's much easier to skip the whole marginal buoyancy part entirely. Use those conductive diamonds for an ionic thruster or something.

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