Cheaper Diamonds?

Industrial diamonds are not necessarily a girl's best friend.

Graphene! Hollow diamonds as big as the Ritz?
--[credit to F. Scott Fitzgerald]

With natural industrial diamonds at their present low prices (Diamond dust wholesale price is currently below $120/kg, 1mm grain is around $420/kg) I don't see this technology finding a market any time soon.

I think most of the regular contributors here see the enormous potential that graphene has demonstrated to this point, this recent development has incredible potential if you can't see that immediately It would be a waste of my time on typing out a tutorial.

Over 95% of all current diamond use in cutting applications is in the form of a paste or an embedded matrix. This new development does nothing to address that market. It may create a new market for machining with diamond coated tools which may be cost effective against additive manufacturing. "Cheaper diamonds" as a title implies cheaper than is presently available, not cheaper than something that does not currently exist. I am not denigrating graphene, or this particular application, I am critical your sloppy title.

20-25 years ago on the cover of Wired magazine was a lovely lady wearing a red dress studded with carat sized diamonds. The article inside concerned a Russian scientist who had developed a system for mass producing diamonds, gem quality and industrial. I haven't heard anything of this since. I wonder if the diamond mine moguls bought him out, or what might have happened to him?

Take heart Fredski, I am working on a smart 3D additive printer with fine/course subtractive capabilities ... using the suggested source of industrial diamonds for the subtractive phase may just be part of the solution I was looking for!

The Columbus 3D MasterMAKER system has been entered for the Australian ZENITH Process and Control Engineering (PACE) Awards. Annoucements June 12. I'll keep you posted.

cool, I look forward to your progress

And also take heart in that I see graphene as a major input material for 3D printed circuit 'boards' ... more like printed circuit blocks, where conductive and insulating materials are printed in multi-head 3D printers to make up the circuits and hold the active and passive components in the 3D matrix.

And if testing the 3D printed circuit block before release shows that it needs a fix, then the diamond cutting subtraction system can put in a path for "a to be deposited track" work around, providing very high acceptance manufacturing numbers.