Friday Night News!

BTD’s president has posted the latest news and goings-on over on our discussion board, and here are some highlights:

Happy Friday, Happy Belated New Year – and Happy Chinese New Year!

We’re off to a flying start with record weekly production for Amora Gem so lots to discuss. Please get comfortable, grab a hot chocolate and let’s get underway!

Amora Production – Weekly production records broken: I’m very pleased to start off the blog with the news that we achieved record weekly production this month! For the first time with TIGER and our v7 parts, we now have very stable and steadily increasing production, week after week.
As the v7 indicates we had to go through 7 major iterations (and many minor iterations) last year to finally get to our goal of consistent, reliable production. A long and expensive trip up the mountain to get to the peak but very pleased we’ve made it.

As a result, we’re steadily working down our waiting list and will be expanding, significantly, our inventory going forward.

Larger size Amoras coming next month: We currently have rough for 9mm (3ct) size Soaring Hearts in laser cutting, and have a lot of 8mm rough being inspected for laser cutting currently.

In addition, due to increasing demand, we will be working on adding 10mm (4ct) as a regular production size. That requires some new ‘fingers’ for TIGER to handle but those are in progress now.

Fancy Blue and Fancy Green Amoras? We’ve had some interesting developments on the fancy color front, both from R&D work on color, and from growth surprises after cutting.

We received a Canadian patent for “Hearts and Arrows SiC Gemstones”! This week our patent attorney informed us that Canada had granted our patent for Hearts and Arrows in SiC Gemstones. This covers not only Amora, but also moissanite and cubic moissanite. We thus have H&A patents in both Canada and Australia, and currently have two other patent applications in the US related to Hearts and Arrows and rounds as well that are in progress.
Below is the nice certificate we received to show the patent grant:

Happy Chinese New Year, have a great month, and look forward to talking at the end of February!

 

The full post with more details can be found on our discussion board, here!

Friday Night News!

August has been a busy month here at BetterThanDiamond, and the president of our company has posted the latest news in the blog.   Here are a few highlights:

Happy Friday! We’ve got one of our more exciting updates this month, so let’s get underway!

BTD makes the Inc 5000!
The Inc 5000 is the annual list of the fastest growing private companies in the US.
BTD ranked #2949, so in the middle of the pack.
As a result, we get to use this nice award logo on our site among other things. Thanks very much for your support as that’s what helped us accomplish this!

Award logo:

BTD News:

Soaring Hearts Production Updates: I’m pleased to note that production has accelerated and we’re setting a new weekly production record this week (at last!).

As a result, this week we’ve restocked 9mm (G-H color, VS1-Internally Flawless). These sold out but not before the email notifications were sent.
We also restocked 8mm today (also sold out), and now have 7.5mm in progress.

Next week we will also be running our first ever 6.5mm for the Soaring Hearts as well.

The plan for the next month is cycling from 6.5mm, 7.5mm, 8mm and 9mm over and over to ensure coverage of the highest demand sizes. I should note that waiting list emails are going out with each restock now, however, they are sent in chronological order from sign up and done proportionately the amount in stock (i.e. the entire list is not blasted when there are only a few stones available, rather a subset is emailed and if they do not sell out, another subset, etc. all in chronological order from sign up).

Soaring Hearts photos! As I mentioned previously we were hoping to have some pro video and photos shot once we had an IF and colorless Soaring Hearts. Ironically, we got our very first one today (D-IF!) but since I knew there would be rioting in the streets of the message boards if another ‘all text’ blog update arrived…I grabbed an H/IF Soaring Hearts and we shot photos for you

Thus, let’s get to the good stuff. Instead of just shooting the Soaring Hearts, by itself, we’ve upped the ante and shot it right next to a stunning 2.22ct AGS-000 H&A diamond so you can see directly how the Soaring Hearts compares to a top tier H&A diamond!

Here’s the specs of each:

Left: Soaring Hearts Amora Gem 2.79ct, H/IF ($1615)
Right: H&A Diamond, 2.22ct, AGS-000 (AGS Triple Zero!), F/VS1 ($42,500)

For reference, the Amora is $1615 and the H&A Diamond is $42,500.

First ever D color, Internally Flawless Soaring Hearts! Literally today we got the grading results which included our first ever D color, Internally Flawless Soaring Hearts! This one sold within minutes of posting but very happy to see our first D/IF in Soaring Hearts!

TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 moving along nicely: We have the last set of custom manufactured parts in progress now and are on track for T-2 and T-3 to be ready in early November. These will greatly help improve production volume.

That’s it for this month! We will continue expanding production and hopefully add more photos/videos over the next month as well.
Have a great weekend, a great month, and hope to see you end of September!

 

As always, the full post with more details, more news, and more pictures can be found on our discussion board!

Friday Night News!

As July come to a close, we have another post from BTD’s president with the latest news :

Happy Friday! This month’s update is shorter than usual so lets get underway!

Amora Gem Updates:

Soaring Hearts Production! We’ve been slowly increasing the total weekly production.
We have two main bottlenecks left to resolve and have new parts underway that should be ready within two weeks.

For reference, one of the bottlenecks is simply due to Amora Gems toughness. It’s a battle with diamond in the initial shaping steps, and it makes for very slow progress as compared to shaping any other gem such as CZ, Sapphire, etc.

So some of the most appealing aspects of Amora – it’s extreme hardness and toughness – also make it an imposing challenge for anyone to process.

Where’s the official video and photos? We’ve held off on doing this for two reasons. First, I’ve been waiting to get a colorless and ideally, Internally Flawless, Soaring Hearts to do our official videos and photos. Secondly, with the extreme demand, I felt it didn’t make sense to tie one up for a week plus, rather than simply selling the production to help offset demand.

BTD News:

New website approaching completion: We’re continuing to work on our new website and added the infrastructure for multi-lingual support this week. Chinese (Simplified and then Traditional) will be the first languages, likely followed by French and German.

Misc:

Paper regarding Amora Gem/ Silcon Carbide and astrophysics: A customer recently asked if there were any papers discussing Amora Gem / Silicon Carbide and where they exist as stardust in outer space. I’m happy to share one such paper here for those interested:
http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/21147.pdf

One of the highlights is that in terms of nebulae, the Egg and Spirograph Nebulae, both highly photographed have been proven to hold Silicon Carbide.
Anyway, it’s a very detailed paper but may be of interest to peruse.

That’s it for this month’s update! Have a great weekend and a great month. We’ll have a lot more news and updates and hopefully official video and photos next month. See you then!

The full post with more news and all the details can be found on our discussion board, here!

Friday Night News!

As mentioned last week, the president of BTD has published the most recent news on our discussion board.  Here are a few highlights:

Soaring Hearts – First Soaring Hearts H&A ready for sale! After a lot of investment in R&D and new tooling and many months of effort and testing, we’ve now got our first 8mm Soaring Hearts finished.

Let’s start with the very first one and it’s grading report:

As it worked out, the first Soaring Hearts were actually certed on July 4th. Appropriate since Amoras are 100% cut in the USA!

Detailed highlights of the new Soaring Hearts:
1 – New Nano-metric polishing
2 – 64 facet vertical girdle – the same as done on H&A diamonds.
3 – TIGER micron-level precision cutting. We’ve improved the precision over the previous TIGER cut Ultras.

The grading lab did take a high-res (60x) photo so I could show the new nano-metric polish, so here’s a zoomed in look of the crown with the new polish:

As you can see, even at 60X there’s no polish lines.  For reference, the faint long white lines are the pavilion facets reflecting in.

The new 64 facet girdle is done the same way as H&A diamonds (vertical faceting). The girdle faceting is, relatively speaking, an extremely costly process – it takes up 1/3 of the cutting time to do 4% of the stone. In addition, you go from dealing with 57 facets to 57 + 64 = 121 facets!

This is why Moissanite, CZ, etc. all don’t bother to do the faceted girdles as it’s too costly. Instead it is simply polished smooth.

Soaring Hearts – upcoming production: We’ll be increasing production of the Soaring Hearts and should have 7mm – 9mm over the next two weeks, along with 6.5mm after that.
All of July and likely well beyond will be focused entirely on Soaring Hearts production as we have a very long waiting list to catch up on.

Next month we’ll definitely have more info such as pro photos, videos, etc. for the Soaring Hearts.
In the interim, have a great weekend and see you end of the month!

The full post with lots more news and details can be found on our discussion board, here!

Stay tuned – lots of news coming next Friday, 7/8!

Hi all,
I’d like to move our usual Friday update to next Friday (July 8th).

We’ve got the first Soaring Hearts (8mm) at the diamond grading lab – thus ideally after they finish the 3D laser inspection, etc. we can show the first offficial Soaring Hearts grading reports, along with our usual updates by waiting until next Friday.

Look forward to talking with you then!

Friday Night News!

Here are a few highlights from the most recent blog post from the president of BTD:

 

Another month and as usual lots of updates!

BTD’s 22nd Birthday on May 4th! I’m pleased to note that BTD will be celebrating it’s 22nd anniversary in a few days, and we’ll celebrate our 22nd with the best Amoras rolling out. Details below!

Amora Gem:

Soaring Hearts Ultra! In last month’s blog, I showed the Flying Hearts which was the winner of our optimization efforts. However, after another week of non-stop optimization and comparisons, we’ve moved to the new ‘Soaring Hearts’ design for our Ultra production going forward.

Here’s a computer video of the new Soaring Hearts design:

All future Ultras will be the Soaring Hearts cut.

We are planning to focus entirely on the Soaring Hearts Ultra, sizes 8mm – 6.5mm initially. We’ve yet to ever have enough 7.5mm and 6.5mm and so with our improved production, the first goal will be to much more robustly restock these. After that we’ll expand further into 6mm – 9mm Soaring Hearts and expand out from there.

Takaras will be discontinued: With all the excitement and momentum of the Amora Gem, it’s a bit disappointing to announce that we are officially cancelling the Takara lab diamonds.

Asha restock: The main sizes of Asha rounds have sold out again, and so we’ve got another run in process. Estimated restock time-frame is the end of May.

 

Quanza, our sponsored elephant, update! We’ve been getting monthly updates on one of our two sponsored elephants, Quanza. I’m happy to report that she’s doing extremely well and now has tusks! The orphanage always sends pretty small photos, but regardless it’s great to see her doing so well. Here’s the latest photo:

 

 

The full post with more news and TIGER updates can be found on our discussion board!

Friday Night News!

Friday updates posted! This month = our new, Flying Hearts Ultra H&A round, new Flanders H&A in progress, TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 in progress and more!  Below are a few highlights and photos but the full post with all the details is available on our discussion board.

Amora Gem:

TIGER robot updates! We’ve had our first month of testing and production with TIGER and the results have been exceptional.

How do I know if an Amora is TIGER cut? All Amoras are now TIGER cut so all new production going forward are Tigers. However, you can also tell by any of the following:

1 – Cert number – all certs 2005101 and higher are TIGER cut.

2 – The cert itself, under comments section – TIGER cut Amora’s are now marked accordingly in the comments section:

New Ultra – Flying Hearts Ultra! After substantial optimization runs, I’m pleased to show you our new Amora Ultra – the Flying Hearts Ultra!

And most importantly, here’s a computer generated video to show you the light play of the Flying Hearts Ultra:

And for comparison, identical computer video of our current Ultra:

New Amora “Pure Hearts” Oval! Next up – I’m thrilled to show your our new Pure Hearts Oval! This is the first “near H&A” oval to ever be developed, and we have a patent application in progress for it!
Let’s start with a computer photo-realistic video of our Pure Hearts Oval in spotlighting so you can see what it’s all about:

The “Pure Hearts” name was developed for this new cut because it had a hearts pattern from the first model. The arrows came later as part of the extensive computer modeling.

Most importantly the new Pure Hearts Oval completely eliminates any type of bow-tie! The result is exceptional brilliance and fire, and the overall look and feel of an H&A round – never before seen in an oval cut!

Hearts pattern, bottom:

partial Arrows pattern, top:

Two more TIGER’s (TIGER-2 and TIGER-3) in progress: Based on our inability to meet demand, we’ve decided to accelerate TIGER production and are thus building two TIGER’s now for the scheduled Sept completion. This will be important for us to try and ensure more Amora production for the big Holiday Season!

See the full post with all the details here!

Friday Night News!

The latest news post has been added to the BTD discussion board.  The full post is on the Amora Gem Blog section of the discussion board, but here are a few highlights:

Amora Gem

TIGER robot complete, transported and installed… production starting next week! I’m very happy to announce that TIGER robot is now finished!
We’ve transported TIGER from Silicon Valley to our new WA cutting facility and it arrived safely yesterday morning.
Our robot engineers are flying out from Silicon Valley and will be working through the weekend to integrate TIGER and we expect to start TIGER production next week (March 1st – 4th)!

TIGER robot patent applications in progress: Note that during the R&D for TIGER, we developed many new key technologies to help us achieve our goal of 10 micron precision. We did review all of our breakthroughs with our patent attorney and will be filing 3 different patents for the TIGER robot.
Thus, our TIGER robot will soon be multi-patent-pending!

Amora Gem production schedule: With TIGER coming online next week, we will be focused on expanding the Ultra inventory first, from 4mm – 8mm sizes.

We’ll then start adding in Princess, OEC, Cushions, Asscher and AVC’s, Radiants, and yes – even Krupps.

BTD News:

X1 WhiteGold now available for our Timeless Rings: We are always trying to offer the very best available metals for our jewelry and thus we’re now making our Timeless rings available in X1 White Gold.
The one negative – white gold can trigger skin issues with some people. This is because of the nickel content. X1 has even higher nickel content, so it does not resolve that issue for those affected.
Palladium of course is both natively white and no allergy issues, but as many customers have noted, finding a jeweler who will work on palladium for resizing or other can be tricky,esp. outside of the US.
Thus, we’re pleased to start making X1 White gold available as a new option for customers around the world.

There’s more news and updates on the blog!

 

First Amora Gem restock of 2016!

This week’s restock, the first Amora restock of 2016, helped us replenish our inventory of Ultras in the 7mm – 7.5mm size range.

Notification emails have been sent to those who signed up on our notification list, and our current available inventory is always available here.

 

Friday Night News!

The most recent updates from BetterThanDiamond are available on our discussion board, and here are a few highlights:

Amora Gem Updates!

US market = fully free on Monday, August 31st! The 20 year, innovation suffocating, patent held by CTHR that blocks most major crystal/family members of Silicon Carbide when cut as gems, will fully expire on Monday, 8/31.  The Moissanite tyranny is at long last over.
This blog was originally started on 11/11/11 when we showed you the very first Amora Gem ever, and we’ve had a nearly four year journey since then but the moment that we’ve long awaited is upon us!
As stated in that original blog post – Amora Gem will be our primary focus going forward for BTD, and our Amora Enhanced Moissanite will no longer be produced now that the US patent has ended.

Amora Gem Oval cut arrives!
We finished cutting the first production set and in our opinion, the ovals came out even better than expected.

Here then is our Amora Gem oval in a studio photo:

and our Amora Gem oval in a studio video!

Inventory and other details are available on our Amora Gem oval page: https://betterthandiamond.com/products/Amora-Gem-Oval-.html

US Patent and Trademark office approves our “Ultra Hearts and Arrows” Trademark! After over a year of legal work, I’m happy to announce that “Ultra Hearts & Arrows”, our unique cutting that maximizes the fire and brilliance for Amora Gem, is now an official registered trademark. Thus we can now use the ® mark signifying our exclusive use in the US. Note that this is the trademark for the name, and not our patent -the Ultra H&A patent is still in process, but another significant step for highlighting and preserving our exclusive Ultra H&A cutting!

Customer feedback on their Amora Gem Ultra: We’re thrilled to continue to see strong customer feedback being posted on our Amora Gem’s, and I wanted to highlight two recent ones from customers with Ultra’s and share these with you:

Quote:

Amora Gem is better than a $35,000.00+ similar sized diamond

I purchased a 1.85 carat, F color, internally flawless Amora Gem in April to propose to my now finance during a Mediterranean Cruise in June.

I had it mounted on an 18 carat yellow gold ring.

I totally surprised her when I proposed on her birthday while at sea between Dubrovnik Croatia and Venice Italy.

Everyone who’s seen the ring is in awe over how nice the Amora Gem looks and no one simply no one has any idea it isn’t a diamond.

The jeweler who mounted the stone was amazed, he couldn’t tell it wasn’t a diamond.

He pulled out a similar sized diamond to do a comparison and he could not tell the difference, obviously he was very careful to keep them separated.

The diamond was over $35,000.00 while the Amora Gem was just over $1,200.00.

You can’t go wrong with an Amora Gem you really can’t.

Glenn

 

and

Quote:

The amora gem is the best jewelry investment I have ever made! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

I received my Amora Gem months ago. I absolutely cannot tell you how happy I am with it. I have never seen anything like it.

I took it to a jeweler, compared it to his real diamonds and honestly, there was no comparison!

He is remaking my ring and he asked if I would like to take the stone (Amora gem) with me until he is ready to set it. He said he didn’t want me to worry about the safety of the stone!

He thought it was real and he looked at it under a loop!

Thanks very much to both of these customers for taking the time to share their feedback!

 

BTD News:

Amora enhanced Moissanite production comes to an end: After four years of production, and with the CTHR patent finally coming to an end, we’ve done our last production run of Amora enhanced Moissanite.

As noted on the very first entry in this blog back in 2011, Amora enhanced Moissanite was only a stop gap product forced because of the US patent, and we wouldn’t continue it after the patent expired.

Takara lab diamonds currently holds ‘world’s largest colorless lab round diamond’ title: Our latest set of Takara lab grown diamonds is now out for sale and features excellent cut rounds from 1.55ct – 2.40ct. The 2.40ct is Ideal cut (D color, VVS2) and is currently the world’s largest colorless, round lab grown diamond available for sale! This made the news last week and here’s the article on Yahoo Finance:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/betterthandiamond-com-announces-world-largest-050500122.html

Takara lab diamond pricing – averaging 1/3 the equivalent mined diamond: I’m also happy to note that our Takara’s are now averaging roughly 1/3 the price of their equivelant mined diamond, while at the same time being purer and harder than nearly all mined equivalents. This is because Takara’s are ultra-pure, and thus at the atomic level, a more perfect diamond and that is why they end up both harder and clearer in terms of physical properties. As the sizes get larger then the pricing vs. mined gets even better as the 2.40ct for example is roughly 1/4 it’s mined equivalent.
Here’s the link to our Takara lab grown diamond inventory:
https://betterthandiamond.com/takara-diamond-search.php

 

Asha restock: While Amora and Takara have been in the spotlight, Asha continues to sell steadily and we just finished a large restock of most sold out sizes. This included H&A rounds, Cushions and Princess.
Link to our Asha section: Asha Diamond Simulant Product section

Asha photos continue to be stolen and used around the world – humour: After the news about our Takara lab diamonds, we received an email from a diamond cutting house that was interested in seeing if they could do the cutting for us. They mentioned their capabilites, how they could consistently do triple EX rounds (Excellent cut, polish, symmetry), etc. I then pulled up their website and what’s on the home page – two examples of their ‘diamond cutting expertise’ are in fact simply stolen Asha images!
Anyway, the testament to how well our Ashas are cut is that the photos of the Ashas are perpetually being used by various diamond dealers, JCK, etc. (illegally) to show as ‘high end mined diamonds’. Frustrating but at the same time a global compliment to our pursuit of cutting perfection for all of our diamond alternatives.

 

 

The full post with all the news and more detail can be found on our discussion board, here!