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My 10-year Wedding Anniversary is coming up so I thought I'd make my wife something special. A few months back I'd seen a show on TV where they demonstrated how companies were now making "cultured" diamonds in the lab. There are a few different methods, but the simplest is something called "chemical vapor distillation". The process is pretty straightforward. Basically, microwaves are used to create a slurry of graphite plasma which, when rapidly cooled form a crystal structure.
I checked around on the internet and found several sites where others have been doing the same thing. The best part was that everything I'd need were pretty common household items. So, I rounded up the necessary supplies and began imagining how great life would be once I'd cornered the international diamond market.
I checked around on the internet and found several sites where others have been doing the same thing. The best part was that everything I'd need were pretty common household items. So, I rounded up the necessary supplies and began imagining how great life would be once I'd cornered the international diamond market.
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Signing UpStep 1Materials
Here's the surprisingly short list of materials I used:
A standard home microwave oven
2 coffee mugs
3 pieces of 3mm graphite pencil lead
A few drops of extra virgin olive oil
A 5" piece of 100% cotton thread
The hardest item to find was the 100% cotton thread. It's amazing how scarce that stuff is. After searching through all of our sewing notions, I finally found some black thread that I think my mom bought back in the 70's.
A standard home microwave oven
2 coffee mugs
3 pieces of 3mm graphite pencil lead
A few drops of extra virgin olive oil
A 5" piece of 100% cotton thread
The hardest item to find was the 100% cotton thread. It's amazing how scarce that stuff is. After searching through all of our sewing notions, I finally found some black thread that I think my mom bought back in the 70's.
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But, you really need to read the entire instructable first, including the comments. The comments reveal some interesting and important details about this process.
very
very
interesting,
my
friend
the only way to create a synthetic diamond in a few minutes, is to create an explosion soooooooooo strong the graphite will pressurize into diamond.
FULL STOP
and that will only give you about 25 to 30 cents of diamond.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
lol rofl!!! ahahahahahahahahahahaha
Please can any help me withthis process?
I saw on lifegems that it is areound 3000 - 250000 to do this. I can not afford this but i need to do this.
Can i do tis in my garage?
Thanks Kama
admin@myfloridakids.org
I don't like being "that guy" but it seems there are plenty of others on this site so im going to say it anyway; thats not a diamond. Here are a few reasons why.
1. The pencil lead you used contains a large amount of clay, not just graphite.
2. Microwaves are not capable of generating the heat neccesary to recrystalize carbon.
3. Even if the microwave could reach the neccessary temperature, the pressure required to make a diamond is around 50,000 to 70,000 times that of earth's atmosphere.
4. How is it that you claim to have made a diamond in your microwave if diamonds weren't even synthesized until 1953, six years after the first microwave oven was made? If they had the technology in 1947, why not use it then?
Sorry for pooping your party, but it looks like im not the only one.
Apollo Diamond
You could use a microwave and an Absorber such as Silicon Carbide to absorb the microwave radiation and convert to heat.
You would need much lower pressures but you would have to have a controlled atmosphere to the Silicon carbide chamber and that chamber would have to have a suitable refractory and need to be kept cool such that its heat up does not cause ionization which results in it absorbing microwaves and heating up as well.
Apollo Diamonds are gem perfect they can only be identified by lack of any defects. Of Course if done at home you could vary input defects theoretically and they could never be identified.
Microwaves are ideal in this process because of the tight control of temperature in connection with the absorber. It is also more energy efficient.
They heat up and radiate in infrared. You need a suitable refractory and you probably want to keep it cool so that it does not heat up and ionize and start absorbing microwave energy.
The temp is achievable.
For small crystals you could use cavitation and therefore not need the high pressures. The crystals would be very small.
For Large crystals you need not have as high a pressure but you do need a controlled atmosphere.
They were using microwaves as early as 1953 at Y-12 to deal with radioactive materials processing.
You may have made Silicon Carbide in a process similar to the Acheson Process if you arced in non controlled atmosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_carbide
Hitler refused to allow his troops to eat food cooked it them because they were proven to mutate protein, and mutant proteins become cancerous, still a researched and proven fact, the old documents are still around for public review, online. Microwaves were around in studies years before they were launched, but they recieved passage into the public through a manipulative buy-off, against the will and recommendation of the reviewing doctors of the day on the panels.
So heads were not all about playing with microwaves in popular masses. A few were daring to launch experiments, but its main intention had some sinister purposes even though it was promoted for cool ones. Diamonds on the other hand would've been a lighter area of creative experimentation, dangerous as all science can be. I wish I'd known about the diamond thing earlier--it would've been fun to work with :D! Glad I no longer use a micro, though..
1. A real diamond placed in a CO2 atmosphere will dissolve into "nothing"--no pressure or heat involved.
2. Fake industrial diamond is not manufactured under such high temperatures or pressures either.
3. An Australian high-school student developed a way of coating materials in diamond micro-dust, using COLD and low pressures--great for making grinding wheels but hopeless for laser focusing devices.
Superheat and pressure is only theory.
You didn't quite bomb my party. I know that diamonds can be formed at much lower temperatures and pressure.(Microscopic diamonds can form on the surface of the sun where the temp. is only 10,000 and where there is little pressure) I was just saying that for a diamond of that size (visible to the naked eye) to be formed, it would take more than the pressure and heat a microwave can generate. Also, if i'm wrong, so be it, i'm only a sophomore in high school anyway and i'm taking physics next year.
Of course, if subsequently worthless "pure" diamond can be grown then lenses and other optics will take a massive left turn in efficiency. And yes, I confidently predict that such method will not only validly suck carbon out of the atmosphere, it will turn out rocks in such volume that the South African economy will collapse.
Go to a big jewelers and ask for yellow diamonds- they are tinted to distinguish them natural ones, but they can come in any colour depending on the material you poison the crystals with. They have the same colour as urine.
I haven't tried it, so can't say if this will work, but I'm skeptical of the chemistry.Once I've destroyed my microwave (it's crap anyway), i'll let you know. (^^)
If the "clay"in question is Clay Aiken, that only strengthens my case - his voice is like diamond.
Maybe you didn't notice the "doneness" button on my microwave... I think it goes to "11."
I assure you that the pressure I was under from my wife to NOT burn our house down exceeded 70,000 bars.
In 1953, President Truman announced we had developed the bomb. Later that month, Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" opened on Broadway. That's just too much of a coincidence for me to believe diamond-microwave technology hadn't been discovered.
Also... you should read the other comments to see how this story ended.
:) Well played. I thought there was something odd about this instructable. Also, pranking me isn't quite that difficult because im the most gullable guy in my county.