The Amora Blog...the Amora Gem Chapter
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Hi all,
Happy Friday and Happy Halloween!!
This will be another shorter update but I've got some video treats you might enjoy as an early Halloween present (if you haven't seen them already).
Grab a drink and get comfortable and let's get underway!
Amora Gem Updates!
Production - not much this month...but new part for nanopolish arrived today! So we actually accomplished a ton of things under the covers but as part of all those improvements, we didn't actually produce many of our new Soaring Hearts Eternity.
While a lot of the improvements were planned, including several software updates that further improve the intelligence of TIGER, we ended up waiting for parts that were slow in arriving and worst of all one of TIGER's arm's broke down.
We'll have that arm both fixed and upgraded next week, and this week especially a whole slew of parts have arrived that will let us finally bypass one of the biggest production bottlenecks since the Soaring Hearts began.
[Edit (10/28 - breaking update
: An upgraded part based on R&D earlier this month for our nanometric polish arrived today and is working spectacularly.
It allows for about 10x better resolution for the nanometric polish and finally resolves our biggest production bottleneck. Expect to see a big jump in production going forward with the new nano2 polish.]
We are hoping to have record production in November and finally get full and steady Soaring Hearts production at last.
Jonathan's video review of Soaring Hearts! While the actual production has been low, the information flow has increased with Jonathan (of GoodOldGold.com and also AugustVintage.com) releasing a 4 of 5 part video review series on the Soaring Hearts Eternity.
It's quite detailed so there's several parts to it. Here's the first two and a screenshot from each as well.
There are 5 total segments, 4 of which have been released.
I'll post these in reverse order because I think you'll like to jump into the lighting comparisons first, and then into the technical data:
Part 2: Lighting comparisons (indoor type lighting)
Part 1: Intro and Tech data:
Screenshot:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Final segment to come. Thanks very much to Jonathan for making this detailed review, and want to note that his new site is up and running at AugustVintage: Home page
GIA and dispersion index - likely November now: Note that because our production was so low this month we didn't have sufficient Amora's to send to GIA yet to do the dispersion (fire index) testing. I also wanted to send all colorless for that to ensure it's measuring the atomically 'best' material.
Anyway, hopefully we'll have the requisite total stones required and in colorless this month and can get the Amora Fire index number soon!
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 on track: TIGER-2 and TIGER-3's last parts are completing this week and we'll be working on getting TIGER-2 up and running by December. We'll then finish TIGER-3 after that but the goal is to get TIGER-2 into production by Christmas, and TIGER-3 into production by Valentines Day.
That will let us significantly expand production for 2017.
AVC update: Note that while we are not going to do any fancy cuts until we are better caught up on Soaring Hearts demand, I did want to mention that the AVC has been further optimized by Jonathan after he purchased the same software we and GIA have for modeling. Thus, when we do start AVC Amora production you'll see an even more improved AVC than before.
BTD News:
Asha restock in November: While Asha doesn't get much coverage in our blog, it continues to sell and we've got a healthy restock that should be completing in November.
Misc News:
Stars being born - triplets! With Amora Gem's link to the stars, I thought we'd close out this months blog with an interesting article and photo of the first ever human viewing of baby stars being born! This is three stars, one on the outer rings and two close together in the center. Many stars are born as binary twins, and this is exactly what is happening here. The circumstellar disk they are forming in here is 8 times the size of our solar system.
Full article: It's Triplets! 3 Newborn Stars Spotted in Forming System
That's it for this month's update! Happy Halloween to US readers, have a great month and hope to see you the end of November!
Less
Happy Friday and Happy Halloween!!
This will be another shorter update but I've got some video treats you might enjoy as an early Halloween present (if you haven't seen them already).
Grab a drink and get comfortable and let's get underway!
Amora Gem Updates!
Production - not much this month...but new part for nanopolish arrived today! So we actually accomplished a ton of things under the covers but as part of all those improvements, we didn't actually produce many of our new Soaring Hearts Eternity.
While a lot of the improvements were planned, including several software updates that further improve the intelligence of TIGER, we ended up waiting for parts that were slow in arriving and worst of all one of TIGER's arm's broke down.
We'll have that arm both fixed and upgraded next week, and this week especially a whole slew of parts have arrived that will let us finally bypass one of the biggest production bottlenecks since the Soaring Hearts began.
[Edit (10/28 - breaking update
: An upgraded part based on R&D earlier this month for our nanometric polish arrived today and is working spectacularly. It allows for about 10x better resolution for the nanometric polish and finally resolves our biggest production bottleneck. Expect to see a big jump in production going forward with the new nano2 polish.]
We are hoping to have record production in November and finally get full and steady Soaring Hearts production at last.
Jonathan's video review of Soaring Hearts! While the actual production has been low, the information flow has increased with Jonathan (of GoodOldGold.com and also AugustVintage.com) releasing a 4 of 5 part video review series on the Soaring Hearts Eternity.
It's quite detailed so there's several parts to it. Here's the first two and a screenshot from each as well.
There are 5 total segments, 4 of which have been released.
I'll post these in reverse order because I think you'll like to jump into the lighting comparisons first, and then into the technical data:
Part 2: Lighting comparisons (indoor type lighting)
Part 1: Intro and Tech data:
Screenshot:
Part 3:
Final segment to come. Thanks very much to Jonathan for making this detailed review, and want to note that his new site is up and running at AugustVintage: Home page
GIA and dispersion index - likely November now: Note that because our production was so low this month we didn't have sufficient Amora's to send to GIA yet to do the dispersion (fire index) testing. I also wanted to send all colorless for that to ensure it's measuring the atomically 'best' material.
Anyway, hopefully we'll have the requisite total stones required and in colorless this month and can get the Amora Fire index number soon!
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 on track: TIGER-2 and TIGER-3's last parts are completing this week and we'll be working on getting TIGER-2 up and running by December. We'll then finish TIGER-3 after that but the goal is to get TIGER-2 into production by Christmas, and TIGER-3 into production by Valentines Day.
That will let us significantly expand production for 2017.
AVC update: Note that while we are not going to do any fancy cuts until we are better caught up on Soaring Hearts demand, I did want to mention that the AVC has been further optimized by Jonathan after he purchased the same software we and GIA have for modeling. Thus, when we do start AVC Amora production you'll see an even more improved AVC than before.
BTD News:
Asha restock in November: While Asha doesn't get much coverage in our blog, it continues to sell and we've got a healthy restock that should be completing in November.
Misc News:
Stars being born - triplets! With Amora Gem's link to the stars, I thought we'd close out this months blog with an interesting article and photo of the first ever human viewing of baby stars being born! This is three stars, one on the outer rings and two close together in the center. Many stars are born as binary twins, and this is exactly what is happening here. The circumstellar disk they are forming in here is 8 times the size of our solar system.
Full article: It's Triplets! 3 Newborn Stars Spotted in Forming System
That's it for this month's update! Happy Halloween to US readers, have a great month and hope to see you the end of November!
Less
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Hi all,
Happy Thanksgiving! Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, this month's blog update is earlier than ever as next Friday will be December, and with the Thanksgiving Holiday, Wednesday becomes the last working day of this week.
A shorter update overall but lots of good news - thus please grab some hot chocolate and let's get underway!
Amora Gem Update:
TIGER-1 upgraded to 1.1...working flawlessly! To pick up where we left off last month, we had our v3 nanopolish parts arrive and we were just kicking off full Soaring Hearts Eternity production.
Unfortunately both of the first runs then crashed out an hour and a half hour before completion due to error's we'd never seen. Basically, instead of taking say 30 microns off for a stage, TIGER suddenly started taking 300 microns and ruining the run...or instead of 20, 200 microns.
The root cause turned out to be that we had 4 weeks of non-stop rain here in Seattle, and the humidity built up inside TIGER's body and affected the electrical contacts.
Thus with data being transmitted as digital spikes of voltage the moisture was disrupting the data in the commands issued, resulting in random and never before seen errors.
Thus, we opted to take TIGER offline and proceed with a full electronics upgrade (with waterproof connectors) that we had been planning, along with a rebuilding of TIGER's wrists and tuning of all it's arms, plus a few software algorithm improvements. We also installed a fan inside TIGER and put in a de-humidifier in the lab.
TIGER has thus became TIGER 1.1 and we couldn't be happier with the results. Production for Soaring Hearts Eternity has now achieved near 'push button' processing and TIGER's precision is the best it's ever been.
Here's a photo of the new motherboard equivalent so you can see what was involved with some of the electronic's upgrade. This is the same new electronics that were built for TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 so now all of our TIGER's will be on the latest and greatest electronics design.
Soaring Hearts Eternity production - excellent production flow at last: As mentioned, production for Soaring Hearts Eternity has ramped up nicely with TIGER 1.1. We had a restock of both 6.5mm/7mm and also 8mm this past week.
Everything promptly sold out but we expect to continue to have record weekly production going forward. December will be 7.5mm and 8mm primarily.
In addition, we're into new rough and the latest restock was all E or F color and only 1 G color.
Thus, we also expect most of the new restocks to be colorless production as well.
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 - all parts complete. Assembly starts next week: I'm happy to note that all parts for TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 have completed machining and are now in shipping to our assembly warehouse.
We're hoping to get TIGER-2 online as early as Christmas and TIGER-3 by Valentines Day.
This of course will let us triple production early in 2017, and allow us a lot more flexibility in terms of size range and eventually shapes.
With TIGER 1.1 proving all of our design and upgrades, we are looking at building as many at 10 TIGER's in 2017.
Eventually TIGER's will be dedicated to various cuts in order to make production as efficient as possible. Thus, for example, one TIGER could end up doing nothing but AVC, while another TIGER could end up doing entirely Krupps, etc.
BTD News:
Elysium diamond wedding bands for men: We're currently evaluating adding the Elysium diamond wedding bands to our inventory as a new option for mens wedding bands. These are solid black diamond bands, made from polycrystalline diamond.
Basically 17-30 carats of small lab grown diamond are fused together at high temp and pressure so that the diamonds grow together and form a continuous band of solid diamond.
Because they are not single crystal, they are black as the random orientation of the original single diamonds means light cannot return and thus the entire ring is a deep black.
We'll know for sure next month after some additional review, but thought these might be a unique option for men's bands that was only recently available. It's also one that solves the biggest concern with men's bands, namely durability. Tungsten carbide has been popular due to it's hardness, but polycrystalline diamond is exponentially harder and also much lighter.
Here's two videos to show their unique properties:
Hardness - you can scratch cement, no damage to the band:
Heat conduction - due to being solid diamond, it has excellent heat conduction such that you can take it off and melt through an ice cube:
Misc:
When a brand name means nothing... After we purchased the aforementioned de-humidifier for our lab, we then received an email about a recall notice for various de-humidifiers. What was interesting was how many 'distinct brands' were in fact nothing but the same Chinese made d-humidifier under the covers.
As part of the recall, the US consumer govt site showed there were 53 brand names being recalled because apparently, these were all actually made by 1 single Chinese manufacturer (Midea).
This included names like Honeywell, Sylvania, GE, Kenmore, etc. which you would have assumed all had their own plants and making unique, distinct products.
Instead you have 1 actual maker putting 53 different brand labels on their product, so your trust in 'brand X' would have been misplaced since they were all being made at the same place, with the same now recalled flaw, but with a different label on the front. And hence all being recalled for the exact same problem.
This is similar in fact to many of the new 'moissanite' brands popping up - for most of these, there's one Chinese maker supplying, but everyone is putting their own brand name on the same product causing consumers to think there's all kinds of new moissanite makers entering the market.
For reference, we are the actual manufacturer of the Amora Gem, cut by TIGER. It's not just a brand name slapped on the same gem everyone else has.
Here's the full recall name list of the 1 single Midea manufactured de-humidifier to show the 53 brand names with 1 actual maker.
"This recall involves 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, and 75-pint dehumidifiers with the following brand names:
Airworks, Alen, Arcticaire, Arctic King, Beaumark, Coolworks, ComfortAire, Comfort Star, Continental Electic, Crosley, Daewoo, Danby, Danby & Designer, Dayton, Degree, Diplomat, Edgestar, Excell, Fellini, Forest Air, Frigidaire, GE, Grunaire, Hanover, Honeywell, Homestyles, Hyundai, Ideal Air, Kenmore (Canada), Keystone, Kul, Midea, Nantucket, Ocean Breeze, Pelonis, Perfect Aire, Perfect Home, Polar Wind, Premiere, Professional Series, Royal Sovereign, Simplicity, Sunbeam, SPT, Sylvania, TGM, Touch Point, Trutemp, Uberhaus, Westpointe, Winix, and Winixl."
Actual maker = Midea.
https://www.cpsc.gov/…/2017/Dehumidifiers-Made-by-Midea-Rec…
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cpsc.gov%2FRecalls%2F2017%2FDehumidifiers-Made-by-Midea-Recalled&h=5AQE1Q2HW&enc=AZPg7orOgxCcIiA85da6YJtA6fqB4a5L9rRaiUQwVm7gH7T_dfFkxtWpG0xrhjI7npm907UCo1zplVXZWqdueu9rNc50CSDaZL-EjwqGvChtuO_-jaxSEC7n82VwCQOTVNOUaSu6tVTV1RMdHouddDmLV5DcbA2PDS9YQMBC61R56JPmGv93Lfz4XK6he0CKIaXWVbUCqMYpY_-tLIVSbyTR&s=1
A view of Mt. Rainier: On a different topic, I thought I'd share this stunning photo of Mt. Rainier and a herd of elk for those who may have never visited the Seattle area (where we produce the Amora Gems). Mt. Rainier dominates the landscape for the entire Seattle area, so it's a daily view in many respects from various highways and open spaces. Elk are also abundant in the more wooded regions.
Anyway, enjoy a quick trip to near where we produce the Amora Gems. Photo credit - Ian McRae Photography | Facebook
Happy Thanksgiving to all! We'll have one more update right after Christmas to catch up on the Soaring Hearts Eternity production and TIGER-2 and T3 expansion for the last update of 2016!
Best regards,
Less
Happy Thanksgiving! Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday, this month's blog update is earlier than ever as next Friday will be December, and with the Thanksgiving Holiday, Wednesday becomes the last working day of this week.
A shorter update overall but lots of good news - thus please grab some hot chocolate and let's get underway!
Amora Gem Update:
TIGER-1 upgraded to 1.1...working flawlessly! To pick up where we left off last month, we had our v3 nanopolish parts arrive and we were just kicking off full Soaring Hearts Eternity production.
Unfortunately both of the first runs then crashed out an hour and a half hour before completion due to error's we'd never seen. Basically, instead of taking say 30 microns off for a stage, TIGER suddenly started taking 300 microns and ruining the run...or instead of 20, 200 microns.
The root cause turned out to be that we had 4 weeks of non-stop rain here in Seattle, and the humidity built up inside TIGER's body and affected the electrical contacts.
Thus with data being transmitted as digital spikes of voltage the moisture was disrupting the data in the commands issued, resulting in random and never before seen errors.
Thus, we opted to take TIGER offline and proceed with a full electronics upgrade (with waterproof connectors) that we had been planning, along with a rebuilding of TIGER's wrists and tuning of all it's arms, plus a few software algorithm improvements. We also installed a fan inside TIGER and put in a de-humidifier in the lab.
TIGER has thus became TIGER 1.1 and we couldn't be happier with the results. Production for Soaring Hearts Eternity has now achieved near 'push button' processing and TIGER's precision is the best it's ever been.
Here's a photo of the new motherboard equivalent so you can see what was involved with some of the electronic's upgrade. This is the same new electronics that were built for TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 so now all of our TIGER's will be on the latest and greatest electronics design.
Soaring Hearts Eternity production - excellent production flow at last: As mentioned, production for Soaring Hearts Eternity has ramped up nicely with TIGER 1.1. We had a restock of both 6.5mm/7mm and also 8mm this past week.
Everything promptly sold out but we expect to continue to have record weekly production going forward. December will be 7.5mm and 8mm primarily.
In addition, we're into new rough and the latest restock was all E or F color and only 1 G color.
Thus, we also expect most of the new restocks to be colorless production as well.
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 - all parts complete. Assembly starts next week: I'm happy to note that all parts for TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 have completed machining and are now in shipping to our assembly warehouse.
We're hoping to get TIGER-2 online as early as Christmas and TIGER-3 by Valentines Day.
This of course will let us triple production early in 2017, and allow us a lot more flexibility in terms of size range and eventually shapes.
With TIGER 1.1 proving all of our design and upgrades, we are looking at building as many at 10 TIGER's in 2017.
Eventually TIGER's will be dedicated to various cuts in order to make production as efficient as possible. Thus, for example, one TIGER could end up doing nothing but AVC, while another TIGER could end up doing entirely Krupps, etc.
BTD News:
Elysium diamond wedding bands for men: We're currently evaluating adding the Elysium diamond wedding bands to our inventory as a new option for mens wedding bands. These are solid black diamond bands, made from polycrystalline diamond.
Basically 17-30 carats of small lab grown diamond are fused together at high temp and pressure so that the diamonds grow together and form a continuous band of solid diamond.
Because they are not single crystal, they are black as the random orientation of the original single diamonds means light cannot return and thus the entire ring is a deep black.
We'll know for sure next month after some additional review, but thought these might be a unique option for men's bands that was only recently available. It's also one that solves the biggest concern with men's bands, namely durability. Tungsten carbide has been popular due to it's hardness, but polycrystalline diamond is exponentially harder and also much lighter.
Here's two videos to show their unique properties:
Hardness - you can scratch cement, no damage to the band:
Heat conduction - due to being solid diamond, it has excellent heat conduction such that you can take it off and melt through an ice cube:
Misc:
When a brand name means nothing... After we purchased the aforementioned de-humidifier for our lab, we then received an email about a recall notice for various de-humidifiers. What was interesting was how many 'distinct brands' were in fact nothing but the same Chinese made d-humidifier under the covers.
As part of the recall, the US consumer govt site showed there were 53 brand names being recalled because apparently, these were all actually made by 1 single Chinese manufacturer (Midea).
This included names like Honeywell, Sylvania, GE, Kenmore, etc. which you would have assumed all had their own plants and making unique, distinct products.
Instead you have 1 actual maker putting 53 different brand labels on their product, so your trust in 'brand X' would have been misplaced since they were all being made at the same place, with the same now recalled flaw, but with a different label on the front. And hence all being recalled for the exact same problem.
This is similar in fact to many of the new 'moissanite' brands popping up - for most of these, there's one Chinese maker supplying, but everyone is putting their own brand name on the same product causing consumers to think there's all kinds of new moissanite makers entering the market.
For reference, we are the actual manufacturer of the Amora Gem, cut by TIGER. It's not just a brand name slapped on the same gem everyone else has.
Here's the full recall name list of the 1 single Midea manufactured de-humidifier to show the 53 brand names with 1 actual maker.
"This recall involves 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, and 75-pint dehumidifiers with the following brand names:
Airworks, Alen, Arcticaire, Arctic King, Beaumark, Coolworks, ComfortAire, Comfort Star, Continental Electic, Crosley, Daewoo, Danby, Danby & Designer, Dayton, Degree, Diplomat, Edgestar, Excell, Fellini, Forest Air, Frigidaire, GE, Grunaire, Hanover, Honeywell, Homestyles, Hyundai, Ideal Air, Kenmore (Canada), Keystone, Kul, Midea, Nantucket, Ocean Breeze, Pelonis, Perfect Aire, Perfect Home, Polar Wind, Premiere, Professional Series, Royal Sovereign, Simplicity, Sunbeam, SPT, Sylvania, TGM, Touch Point, Trutemp, Uberhaus, Westpointe, Winix, and Winixl."
Actual maker = Midea.
https://www.cpsc.gov/…/2017/Dehumidifiers-Made-by-Midea-Rec…
https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cpsc.gov%2FRecalls%2F2017%2FDehumidifiers-Made-by-Midea-Recalled&h=5AQE1Q2HW&enc=AZPg7orOgxCcIiA85da6YJtA6fqB4a5L9rRaiUQwVm7gH7T_dfFkxtWpG0xrhjI7npm907UCo1zplVXZWqdueu9rNc50CSDaZL-EjwqGvChtuO_-jaxSEC7n82VwCQOTVNOUaSu6tVTV1RMdHouddDmLV5DcbA2PDS9YQMBC61R56JPmGv93Lfz4XK6he0CKIaXWVbUCqMYpY_-tLIVSbyTR&s=1
A view of Mt. Rainier: On a different topic, I thought I'd share this stunning photo of Mt. Rainier and a herd of elk for those who may have never visited the Seattle area (where we produce the Amora Gems). Mt. Rainier dominates the landscape for the entire Seattle area, so it's a daily view in many respects from various highways and open spaces. Elk are also abundant in the more wooded regions.
Anyway, enjoy a quick trip to near where we produce the Amora Gems. Photo credit - Ian McRae Photography | Facebook
Happy Thanksgiving to all! We'll have one more update right after Christmas to catch up on the Soaring Hearts Eternity production and TIGER-2 and T3 expansion for the last update of 2016!
Best regards,
Less
Hey, Les, since the production output of the Amora Gem isn't going as planned, and people are disappointed by being on the waitlist for five years now and still not getting any closer to getting them, why not step up the production of the next best thing--Asha Diamond simulant? Start making it in all the shapes like in the past and then on the side, you can continue trying to figure out all the kinks in the Amora production with the Tiger machine. That way people won't be so disappointed. I still think Asha is the best diamond substitute out there and since it sounds like another year or more before you get the kinks worked out, people might be a little happier.
Hi all,
Happy Friday! Due to the Holidays the next full Friday update won't be until end of January.
However, I wanted to quickly post a minor update for now:
Amora Gem Production: Production is expanding nicely and we're having multiple restocks per week now. Sizes have been 7mm - 8mm, (Soaring Hearts Eternity) and color's ranging from D-H color.
We have new rough readying for production and color's are likely to be very high % of D and E color based on initial results.
It may end up that the majority of our production in 2017 is D color and if so, we'll be able to reduce the current premium for D color (due to it's rarity) and make that more accessible for everyone. In my opinion, D color is the very best look for the Amora Gem as it maximizes light output and thus fire/brilliance and unlike diamond, doesn't look glassy when it's that clear due to it's higher Refractive Index.
Sky Blue Amora Gem color: A bit of a surprise, but we may have some Sky Blue Amora's this year. These will likely grade as Fancy Light Blue on the diamond scale but are a bit softer blue hue than the more navy diamond blue. More details to come.
New Amora Patent filing: We've filed for another US patent. This covers optimal fire and brilliance for SiC round gems and is the result of all the computer modeling done last Spring through Fall.
Thus, our newest patent application
"Optimal Brilliance and Fire for Round Brilliant SiC Gems".
US Patent application 15/378,839
This also makes the Soaring Hearts Eternity H&A officially patent pending, as it is covered in this latest patent filing.
TIGER-1, TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 and Year End thoughts: TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 will be coming online early 2017 and that will let us triple total production. More importantly, we made it through a very difficult year transitioning to TIGER from our old robots and after tons of work, now have an excellent and robust production process that we can scale with as we grow in 2017.
Believe it or not but we are on v7 parts for TIGER. I realize the many production delays were very frustrating for customers this year, but rest assured we worked 6 and 7 days weeks most of this year with the one goal of ensuring our Amora Gem H&A (now finalized with the Soaring Hearts Eternity H&A design) would be the pinnacle and ultimate H&A gem.
2017 looks incredibly bright and we are looking forward to massively increasing production and ending the wait lists in 2017!
Happy New Year and see you end of January for a more detailed update!
Less
Happy Friday! Due to the Holidays the next full Friday update won't be until end of January.
However, I wanted to quickly post a minor update for now:
Amora Gem Production: Production is expanding nicely and we're having multiple restocks per week now. Sizes have been 7mm - 8mm, (Soaring Hearts Eternity) and color's ranging from D-H color.
We have new rough readying for production and color's are likely to be very high % of D and E color based on initial results.
It may end up that the majority of our production in 2017 is D color and if so, we'll be able to reduce the current premium for D color (due to it's rarity) and make that more accessible for everyone. In my opinion, D color is the very best look for the Amora Gem as it maximizes light output and thus fire/brilliance and unlike diamond, doesn't look glassy when it's that clear due to it's higher Refractive Index.
Sky Blue Amora Gem color: A bit of a surprise, but we may have some Sky Blue Amora's this year. These will likely grade as Fancy Light Blue on the diamond scale but are a bit softer blue hue than the more navy diamond blue. More details to come.
New Amora Patent filing: We've filed for another US patent. This covers optimal fire and brilliance for SiC round gems and is the result of all the computer modeling done last Spring through Fall.
Thus, our newest patent application
"Optimal Brilliance and Fire for Round Brilliant SiC Gems".
US Patent application 15/378,839
This also makes the Soaring Hearts Eternity H&A officially patent pending, as it is covered in this latest patent filing.
TIGER-1, TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 and Year End thoughts: TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 will be coming online early 2017 and that will let us triple total production. More importantly, we made it through a very difficult year transitioning to TIGER from our old robots and after tons of work, now have an excellent and robust production process that we can scale with as we grow in 2017.
Believe it or not but we are on v7 parts for TIGER. I realize the many production delays were very frustrating for customers this year, but rest assured we worked 6 and 7 days weeks most of this year with the one goal of ensuring our Amora Gem H&A (now finalized with the Soaring Hearts Eternity H&A design) would be the pinnacle and ultimate H&A gem.
2017 looks incredibly bright and we are looking forward to massively increasing production and ending the wait lists in 2017!
Happy New Year and see you end of January for a more detailed update!
Less
Hi all,
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 tools, 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.
In addition, I'm also pleased to note that as predicted in last months blog update, the % of D color and E color has shot up.
Our last restock included 34% D color and 33% E color.
Just as importantly we also had 6 total D color, Internally Flawless Amoras!
Larger size Amora's 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.
1 - R&D work on Fancy Light Blue - we've been test cutting some of the first 'intentional blue' Amora Gem's. Below is a photo of two pieces of rough so you can see these are an icy light blue color. To be clear, these are doped with a coloring element during growth, and grown in separate growth units than the ultra-pure whites:
One is heading into grading but, due to the high white light return of the Soaring Hearts Eternity cut, the color result is very faint blue unlike the rough photo. When you view the underside you see the blue, but from the top, where it's returning a lot of light, it's actually very hard to tell apart from our normal whites.
Thus we may try and deepen the doping to increase the final color saturation to a more obvious light blue.
2 - Fancy light blue and Fancy green in *pure* Amora's: You may recall from about two years ago that we also had some fancy light blue's. Ironically, even as we were testing the intentional blues above, we had 4 Fancy Light Blues pop up in the pure white rough, which are some of the first in over two years.
This blue is also very light - you see some blue in various flashes, otherwise it mostly looks white, but the underlying cause is very different.
These blues are atomically super pure, just like our whites, but some type of either slight twist or change in the angle of crystal lattice allows the blue light to pass through more rapidly than the other wavelengths...this is known as Rayleigh scattering and is the same reason the sky appears blue. As the light source intensity increases, then the blue color in the stone also increases.
Finally, we also had 2 Fancy Green's appear in this months production. These were also grown in ultra-pure white conditions, but the green is actually more visible than the blue. Since these were also grown in the ultra-pure conditions, we attribute the color to a different twist in the crystal lattice causing it to slow down both blue (the opposite of the light blues above which allow blue to pass through more readily) and red wavelengths, and thus green light from the incoming white light passes through more easily and the Amora is visibly green.
We've never had green before and unlikely we will again, but we'll be posting these 2 and the Fancy Light Blue's out for sale next week.
Customer feedback - "A message to men. We want Amora!" We received a really nice customer feedback on our Amora from a customer that has had their's for over two years and wanted to share that with you:
"A message to men. We want Amora!"
"I've had my Amora for a little over two years now and it is still just as amazing as the day I received it. It's so bright and beautiful that it often catches my eye with its sparkle. I am always stunned with its beauty and whenever this happens I am reminded of my wonderful husband who got this gift for me.
Now men, it has come to my attention that you are more wary of this product than women. You worry that she will be disappointed because it's not a "real diamond," that it isn't good enough, or name brand.
Well let me tell you that it truly is better than diamond and a few women in my life who were given diamonds tell me in secret that they think so too.
I told my sister and her now husband all about this magical stone and she was thrilled. He got her a diamond anyways and now a year and a half later she still laments to me about how my ring that was less than 1/2 the cost of hers is so much better and brighter.
The exact same thing happened with another girlfriend of mine. So men, when she tells you she wants an Amora it's not because she is worried about your ability to afford a diamond or anything else. It's because she wants something superior. "
Greatly appreciate this customer's feedback, especially given that our goal with Amora is to offer something superior in every aspect.
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:
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 and Fancy cuts: TIGER-2 is roughly 2 weeks away from completion. We'll have to then do another two weeks+ of testing but we are hoping to have TIGER-2 here and in production by the end of February. TIGER-3 is approximately 80% complete and we are targeting end of March for it to be fully in production.
Thus, by April we hope to have 3x the current production capacity and are then looking at adding 3 more TIGERs (T-4, T-5 and T-6) this summer.
Once we get to sufficient Soaring Hearts Eternity production, then we will look at dedicating one or more TIGER's just for fancy cuts, with AVC and Krupps the likely candidates for dedicated production. Overall, it's far more efficient to have a TIGER dedicated to each specific cut than having to switch between cuts on a single TIGER, so that will open up a lot more production options and thus fancy shape options in the future.
BTD News:
Moving to new website hopefully this summer: With the most pressing issue of increasing Amora production well underway, we are starting to have time to look at improving other aspects such as our website. Thus, the tentative plan is to move over to our new site (previewed a bit last Fall here) at some point this summer. The key will be once we have established sufficient Amora inventory so that many of the new features (earring wizard, ring wizard) will actually be useful to you. Without inventory to select of course having nice features to help walk you step by step for making earrings, etc. is a bit moot.
Misc:
Star and Milky Way photos: To close out this months blog and in recognition of Amora's star-borne history, I'm happy to show a couple exceptional starry night photos.
The first, from James Mead, taken at Trillium Lake, Oregon, USA:
James Mead:
James Mead (@jamesmeadphotography) • Instagram photos and videos
The second, from Tyson Chappell and appropriate for Winter - this was taken in Utah, USA:
Tyson Chappell:
Tyson Chappell (@chappell_shots) • Instagram photos and videos
That's it for this month! Happy Chinese New Year, have a great month, and look forward to talking end of February!
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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 tools, 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.
In addition, I'm also pleased to note that as predicted in last months blog update, the % of D color and E color has shot up.
Our last restock included 34% D color and 33% E color.
Just as importantly we also had 6 total D color, Internally Flawless Amoras!
Larger size Amora's 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.
1 - R&D work on Fancy Light Blue - we've been test cutting some of the first 'intentional blue' Amora Gem's. Below is a photo of two pieces of rough so you can see these are an icy light blue color. To be clear, these are doped with a coloring element during growth, and grown in separate growth units than the ultra-pure whites:
One is heading into grading but, due to the high white light return of the Soaring Hearts Eternity cut, the color result is very faint blue unlike the rough photo. When you view the underside you see the blue, but from the top, where it's returning a lot of light, it's actually very hard to tell apart from our normal whites.
Thus we may try and deepen the doping to increase the final color saturation to a more obvious light blue.
2 - Fancy light blue and Fancy green in *pure* Amora's: You may recall from about two years ago that we also had some fancy light blue's. Ironically, even as we were testing the intentional blues above, we had 4 Fancy Light Blues pop up in the pure white rough, which are some of the first in over two years.
This blue is also very light - you see some blue in various flashes, otherwise it mostly looks white, but the underlying cause is very different.
These blues are atomically super pure, just like our whites, but some type of either slight twist or change in the angle of crystal lattice allows the blue light to pass through more rapidly than the other wavelengths...this is known as Rayleigh scattering and is the same reason the sky appears blue. As the light source intensity increases, then the blue color in the stone also increases.
Finally, we also had 2 Fancy Green's appear in this months production. These were also grown in ultra-pure white conditions, but the green is actually more visible than the blue. Since these were also grown in the ultra-pure conditions, we attribute the color to a different twist in the crystal lattice causing it to slow down both blue (the opposite of the light blues above which allow blue to pass through more readily) and red wavelengths, and thus green light from the incoming white light passes through more easily and the Amora is visibly green.
We've never had green before and unlikely we will again, but we'll be posting these 2 and the Fancy Light Blue's out for sale next week.
Customer feedback - "A message to men. We want Amora!" We received a really nice customer feedback on our Amora from a customer that has had their's for over two years and wanted to share that with you:
"A message to men. We want Amora!"
"I've had my Amora for a little over two years now and it is still just as amazing as the day I received it. It's so bright and beautiful that it often catches my eye with its sparkle. I am always stunned with its beauty and whenever this happens I am reminded of my wonderful husband who got this gift for me.
Now men, it has come to my attention that you are more wary of this product than women. You worry that she will be disappointed because it's not a "real diamond," that it isn't good enough, or name brand.
Well let me tell you that it truly is better than diamond and a few women in my life who were given diamonds tell me in secret that they think so too.
I told my sister and her now husband all about this magical stone and she was thrilled. He got her a diamond anyways and now a year and a half later she still laments to me about how my ring that was less than 1/2 the cost of hers is so much better and brighter.
The exact same thing happened with another girlfriend of mine. So men, when she tells you she wants an Amora it's not because she is worried about your ability to afford a diamond or anything else. It's because she wants something superior. "
Greatly appreciate this customer's feedback, especially given that our goal with Amora is to offer something superior in every aspect.
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:
TIGER-2 and TIGER-3 and Fancy cuts: TIGER-2 is roughly 2 weeks away from completion. We'll have to then do another two weeks+ of testing but we are hoping to have TIGER-2 here and in production by the end of February. TIGER-3 is approximately 80% complete and we are targeting end of March for it to be fully in production.
Thus, by April we hope to have 3x the current production capacity and are then looking at adding 3 more TIGERs (T-4, T-5 and T-6) this summer.
Once we get to sufficient Soaring Hearts Eternity production, then we will look at dedicating one or more TIGER's just for fancy cuts, with AVC and Krupps the likely candidates for dedicated production. Overall, it's far more efficient to have a TIGER dedicated to each specific cut than having to switch between cuts on a single TIGER, so that will open up a lot more production options and thus fancy shape options in the future.
BTD News:
Moving to new website hopefully this summer: With the most pressing issue of increasing Amora production well underway, we are starting to have time to look at improving other aspects such as our website. Thus, the tentative plan is to move over to our new site (previewed a bit last Fall here) at some point this summer. The key will be once we have established sufficient Amora inventory so that many of the new features (earring wizard, ring wizard) will actually be useful to you. Without inventory to select of course having nice features to help walk you step by step for making earrings, etc. is a bit moot.
Misc:
Star and Milky Way photos: To close out this months blog and in recognition of Amora's star-borne history, I'm happy to show a couple exceptional starry night photos.
The first, from James Mead, taken at Trillium Lake, Oregon, USA:
James Mead:
James Mead (@jamesmeadphotography) • Instagram photos and videos
The second, from Tyson Chappell and appropriate for Winter - this was taken in Utah, USA:
Tyson Chappell:
Tyson Chappell (@chappell_shots) • Instagram photos and videos
That's it for this month! Happy Chinese New Year, have a great month, and look forward to talking end of February!
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Sorry the quality of the pic isn't better but as you can see I think there is a "hole" in my amora gem. Or an inclusion? It was a F VS2 stone which is supposed to be eye clean. I was taking this to my jeweler on Tuesday to be set but now I'm going to see if he thinks this stone will even be eye clean once set. I.am.so.bummed. Has anyone else had this issue. I'm sorry if this is a repeat post.
Attachments
Setting it won't make it eye clean. The stone is either eye clean or it isn't. Somebody posted on another thread that there was a light spot, that looked like a hole, by the cutlet of her Amora stone that was noticeable to the naked eye. She posted pictures. I just don't remember what thread she posted on.
Thank you so much for your reply. I am very disappointed in how this stone was graded. It's not eye clean and from what I've read VS2 SHOULD be eye clean? This has been a huge waste of my time. Should I look for internally flawless stones now or would a VVS1 or 2 for sure be eye clean? Any advice will be appreciated!