Lab Grown Diamond Polishing: All You Must Know
Who doesn’t love a sparkling diamond, right?
But do you know what goes into giving your lab-grown diamonds that sparkle and brilliance? What makes them shine, and the steps that go into ensuring it emanates light in the perfect manner?
In this blog, we deep dive into the process of diamond polishing.
Whether mined or lab-manufactured diamonds, they have to go through a series of steps involving cutting and polishing that make them fit to be part of your jewelry.
Let’s get into it!
What are lab grown diamonds?
There are two ways of sourcing diamonds—either mine them from under the earth or manufacture them in laboratories – lab grown diamonds. Also known as cultured diamonds, lab made diamonds are created by mimicking the same process that forms diamonds naturally under the earth. Lab-made diamonds are as real as mined diamonds and have the same optical and chemical properties as mined diamonds.
What is diamond polishing?
When diamonds are sourced—from the earth or made in labs—at the first stage, they are rough diamonds. They look like stones, rough and shapeless. These rough diamonds have to go through the process of polishing for them to have shape, sparkle, and brilliance. Lab grown diamonds also have to be polished.
How are cultured diamonds polished?
Whether they are lab-produced diamonds or mined diamonds, they have to go through various steps of cutting and polishing.
Step 1: Rough diamond assortment
The first step is sorting out rough diamonds. This process involves sorting diamonds based on different factors, such as shape, size, and weight of the rough lab-produced diamonds. This stage may seem simple, but it isn’t. Rough lab created diamonds are segregated based on the size by determining the number of diamonds that can be cut from one rough diamond.
Step 2: Planning and marking rough lab created diamonds
Following the process of segregating diamonds, they go through the process of planning and marking the cutting stage. This process can either be conducted manually or through automated software systems designed for precise planning, particularly in the case of lab-grown diamonds.
Step 3: Cutting and polishing cultured diamonds
This is the most critical stage in diamond polishing. That’s because this is the stage that leads to the final characteristics of the lab-manufactured diamond. This process involves manual techniques or technology-based methods such as lasers. The rough lab diamond is meticulously transformed into a polished diamond. This process gives the lab created diamond its shape, sparkle, brilliance, and carat weight.
Lab grown diamond polish features
Now that we know a bit about the key steps of diamond polishing, let’s go further in detail to understand the different features of polishing lab-manufactured diamonds.
|
Diamond polishing terminology |
Meaning |
| Abrasion (Abr) | Abrasion is an area characterized by tiny scratches or pits along a facet’s edge, resulting in a blurred white line rather than a distinct facet junction. |
| Burn (Brn) | The whitish haze caused due to excessive heat during the polishing process or occasionally from a jeweler’s torch, is designated as burn in the lab produced diamond polishing process. |
| Laser Manufacturing Remnant (LMR) | LMR is any residual mark from laser manufacturing that remains on the surface of the polished lab-created diamond. It is often a transparent or white groove. It is only classified as polish when it does not extend into the diamond under 10x magnification. |
| Lizard skin (LS) | A clear, irregular texture limited to a single facet, resulting from polishing the facet at an angle off its intended alignment. |
| Nick | A minor indentation found at a facet junction, typically situated along the girdle or at the culet of the lab-produced diamond. |
| Polish lines | Lines running parallel to each other, remnants of the polishing process. They may manifest as either white (Wht) or transparent (TP). A pronounced transparent polish line extending from a surface-reaching feature is more precisely termed a drag line. |
Summing up – lab created diamond polishing
From transforming a diamond seed into a full-grown rough diamond to cutting and polishing lab grown diamonds—there are a lot of critical steps. Each of these steps requires expertise, skill, specialized material, equipment, and knowledge.
Unless each step is carried out with precision and care, you won’t be able to get a cultured diamond that sparkles and beams quality.
Now that you know the process of polishing diamonds, you are better informed the next time you set out to buy your lab made diamonds. Whether you’re a diamond retailer or a wholesaler, or even an individual diamond connoisseur, explore the best lab-grown diamonds with Grown Diamond Corporation.
