[Rockhounds] You can buy a diamond-making machine for $200, 000 on Alibaba

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

In an age when you can get just about anything online, it's probably no
surprise that you can buy a diamond-making machine
<https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/HPHT-Cubic-Press-Synthetic-Diamond-Making_1600318712802.html?spm=a2700.7724857.0.0.237f4032pTaqn6>
for
$200,000 on Chinese eCommerce site Alibaba. If, like me, you haven't been
paying attention to the diamond industry, it turns out that the
availability of these machines reflects an ongoing trend toward
democratizing diamond production—a process that began decades ago and
continues to evolve.

The history of lab-grown diamonds dates back at least half a century.
According to Harvard graduate student Javid Lakha, writing in a comprehensive
piece <https://worksinprogress.co/issue/lab-grown-diamonds/> on lab-grown
diamonds published in Works in Progress last month, the first successful
synthesis of diamonds in a laboratory setting occurred in the 1950s. Lakha
recounts how Howard Tracy Hall <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Hall>,
a chemist at General Electric, created the first lab-grown diamonds using a
high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) process that mimicked the conditions
under which diamonds form in nature.

Since then, diamond-making technology has advanced significantly. Today,
there are two primary methods for creating lab-grown diamonds: the HPHT
process and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Both types of machines
are now listed
on Alibaba
<https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/synthetic-diamond-making-machine.html>,
with prices starting at around $200,000
<https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/HPHT-Cubic-Press-Synthetic-Diamond-Making_1600318712802.html>,
as pointed out <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41492001> in a Hacker
News comment by engineer John Nagle (who goes by "Animats
<https://www.animats.com/classic/index.html>" on Hacker News). A CVD
machine we found is more pricey, at around $450,000
<https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/VOAINO-WD-2204-915MHz-2450MHz-synthetic_1601024732626.html>
.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/you-can-buy-a-diamond-making-machine-for-200000-on-alibaba/