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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

#441

Post by gs17 »

opan wrote: post #222
amelius wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we can have diamond-based scratch protection on smartphones?

Don't we already have good scratch protection? Cracks from drops seem like the main issue.

And it's a tradeoff. I found out the hard way that newer Pixels have incredibly soft screens to avoid cracks and shattering. Unfortunately, they're so soft that a fingernail (a 2.5 on the Mohs scale) will leave huge gouges quickly. Fortunately, there's third-party covers that use an adhesive that fills in the scratches well.

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

#443

Post by dirtdobber »

hungie wrote: post #439
dirtdobber wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This diamond caused untold human suffering and exploitation to acquire." Dude, the copper in your phone required untold human suffering and exploitation to acquire. You want to profess some grand moral judgement about purchasing mined minerals, but I guarantee all of that moral judgment goes out the door when it comes to products that you can afford and want to buy.

Just because we accept it in one place doesn't mean we should blanket accept it everywhere. This isn't some inductive proof of human suffering where we can just k+1 cases where people do bad things. Whataboutism isn't a useful or helpful way to discuss an industry with unbelievable human suffering. Start a post about copper mining if you want to discuss copper mining. We're talking diamonds here, which have a demonst…

> Whataboutism isn't a useful or helpful way to discuss an industry with unbelievable human suffering.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. My point was not that there's not human suffering in the diamond industry, nor that it isn't bad. My point is that you, a person that cannot afford expensive natural diamonds (speaking statistically here, I don't know you personally), probably should not cast moral judgments on others that can and do purchase expensive natural diamonds. This is due to the fact that you, a person that can afford a cell phone, chooses to purchase a cell phone, despite that industry experiencing similar levels of human suffering. Therefore, I am forced to believe that in the counterfactual world where you can afford expensive diamonds, you would buy them.

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

#444

Post by foobarian »

trissylegs wrote: post #341
agumonkey wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will they maintain their jewelry business ? It feels like Sony CD-R drives in the Playstation era.

I think people will keep buying diamond jewelry with natural because it the product is sold as real/natural diamonds. Prestige is important for the high-end market and most of the price will be markup anyway. (Well diamonds are nearly all markup anyway). Tiffany's isn't suddenly going to be cheaper.

Or even the other way around: with the economies of scale created by industrial use cases removed, mining diamonds just for jewelry could get more expensive.

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

#446

Post by adrian_b »

thfuran wrote: post #285
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #124

Earlier 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!

I just want a diamond heat sink. And a diamond kitchen knife.

Zirconia kitchen knives are very hard and they are less fragile than diamond.

They have the advantage of keeping a sharp edge for a much longer time than steel blades, but they cannot be sharpened again with simple tools and for some purposes it may be inconvenient that the zirconia blades cannot be made as thin as the best steel blades, due to the risk of breakage, and there are also less choices of blade forms, e.g. there are no bird's beak zirconia blades, which is the best shape for peeling and paring vegetables.

High-quality zirconia kitchen knives, like those made by Kyocera, are very pleasant to work with. Diamond blades could not feel much different, even if they should remain sharp for a longer time, but with a higher risk of breakage when mishandled.

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

#447

Post by adrian_b »

chii wrote: post #325
thfuran wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want a diamond heat sink. And a diamond kitchen knife.

> And a diamond kitchen knife. Which shatters on contact with a small bone.

In my opinion, the right way of cooking is to always start by removing all bones with a specialized knife, i.e. a boning knife or a filleting knife.

The meat without bones and also most vegetables can be handled by the currently existing ceramic kitchen knives and they could be handled by a diamond knife (though diamond, even in polycrystalline form, is much less tough than zirconia ceramic or silicon nitride ceramic, which are better suited for kitchen knives).

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

#448

Post by thaumasiotes »

avhon1 wrote: post #113
zettabomb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to take a guess and say it's because of ruby lasers. They make massive synthetic ruby rods for lasers, but it needs to be one solid piece with very low impurities. A small defect will cause the rod to be entirely unusable for a laser, but there can still be large portions usable for other purposes with less stringent requirements. An example is ruby tipped 3D printer nozzles, used for abrasive filaments, wh…

Other mass-market uses for small rubies are for bearings in precision gear trains, and wear-resistant tips for precision measuring devices.

Why would those need to be red?

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

#449

Post by gs17 »

_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, it's possible on modern phone screens. My Pixel 8 Pro has Victus 2 (AFAIK), which scratched very easily from fingernails alone.

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

#450

Post by agtech_andy »

There has been a massive (but slow) sell off of natural diamonds. People in the industry have known this time was coming for a while.

It is very much a bag holder problem.

In some countries, people (often families) have saved for a long time to accumulate some inventory of something that is now worth a lot less. The diamond industry varies a bit by country, but in places where individual dealers hold a lot of inventory, there is a lot of incentive to be against synthetics.

I saw this firsthand in Turkey. I gave my a fiancée a ring with a very nice moissanite stone about a year and a half ago. She showed it to some jewelers and most had to really make a show of things like, "Congratulations on your upcoming wedding, but I can only work with real stones. We are not supposed to even look at these."

And I don't blame them for at least having to act this way. A lot of these family stores have hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of natural diamond inventory that they took years to accumulate, and along comes something that is superior in every way for a fraction of the price.

Yes. In some other places around the world, the resistance to lab grown stuff has been violent. But the industry of natural diamonds is much more violent, and it is great to see that the way we mine diamonds will soon be a thing of the past.

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