Editor’s Note
This article highlights the commercial availability of synthetic diamond manufacturing equipment, reflecting the growing accessibility of lab-grown gemstone technology. The pricing and bulk discount structure offer insight into the industrial scale of this market segment.
While diamonds are formed under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions deep within the Earth, they can also be created artificially. On the Chinese online shopping site Alibaba, a machine capable of manufacturing synthetic diamonds is being sold for $200,000 (approximately 28.2 million yen). Purchasing 10 or more units reduces the price per machine to $190,000 (approximately 27.8 million yen), a 5% discount.
The diamond manufacturing machine is listed by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind, a China-based company that is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of diamond production equipment.
There are two main methods for creating synthetic diamonds: the High-Pressure High-Temperature (HPHT) method, which presses graphite under conditions similar to natural diamond formation, and the Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) method, which layers gases like hydrogen and methane. The machine sold by Henan Huanghe Whirlwind on Alibaba uses the HPHT method.
Thanks to such machines, it has become relatively easy to produce items like 10cm diameter diamonds for laser use. A Hacker News user named Animats, who discovered the machine, commented:
One of Henan Huanghe Whirlwind’s sales pages for the HPHT machine states that the unit weighs 44 tons and comes with a one-year warranty.
Meanwhile, in the realm of natural diamonds, the use of industrial X-ray systems to scan rock prior to mining has led to discoveries of exceptionally large diamonds that would have been difficult to find previously.
Most recently, in August 2024, a 2,492-carat diamond, said to be the second largest ever found, was discovered in Botswana.
