thanks for joining us today my name is jacob dupuis and i am joined by guy bornstein our head of gemology here at stuller we wanted to talk a little bit today about diamonds specifically lab-grown diamonds the impact that they've made on the industry and the different ways that we can identify these stones and what we can do to get around those concerns now what i have here guy is a ring that has three stones in it when i look at them they are of course optically identical and it would be very easy for me to say that these are all three diamonds how would i go about understanding the true nature of these stones so for jewelers for years they had a kind of a device that they used called diamond tester in order to differentiate between diamonds and non-diamond materials what we call simulants these simulants are actually different minerals they have different chemical composition different physical properties and we use this differentiation in order to distinguish between the real diamond and the other minerals now we have a kind of a change in the industry now we have a new player which called labron diamond these laboratory grown diamonds are actually the same mineral like the natural diamond they have the same chemical composition same physical properties and they will act the same as natural diamond for those diamond testers that we used for years so these are the diamond testers that we're talking about yes and whenever we are using these what is the technology that this is employing to test these diamonds we are actually trying to differentiate diamonds from the non-diamond materials according to the properties we are testing each mineral for the conductivity in heat and electricity and where and we by that can differentiate out cubic zirconias and the synthetic moistenites so with these testers we are introducing heat or electricity seeing how the stones react to it and determining most likely what the stone is based on that metric yes now how about these these are our screeners correct yes as we said we have a new player in the field which are the lab grown diamonds the diamond tessas are not able to differentiate between natural diamonds and love growing diamonds they just can point that this mineral is a diamond regardless the origin so for that we have this new generation of devices that we call screeners the same as we have screeners in airports these just check whether the diamonds are of natural origin meaning everything is okay you can move forward with your jewelry sale or whether they these diamonds need further testing to reveal the two identity so essentially we've determined that we have diamonds now that we've done this we have to go over to more advanced technology and we have to see what the actual origin of these stones might be so if we have just these screeners are testers still necessary yes because because many of these screeners cannot differentiate between diamonds and non-diamond materials so you need actually to merge them together to a kind of a process where you're starting with the diamond testers make sure that you have a diamond in your hand and then going to the screener to differentiate between natural diamonds and laboratory ground downloads i see so we're needing to have multiple pieces of equipment employing multiple types of technology just to determine what we feel we already know with these stones it seems like a big investment for missing or misidentifying only a few stones yes but the issue is not about the stones this was about the integrity of the seller today we have plenty of love grown diamonds in the market they are actually flooding the market the only way that a jeweler can feel confident that he can offer something to a customer knowing hundred percent that he is selling what he's disclosing will be using these uh things we actually not selling you here devices to check your diamonds we are actually selling you devices to defend your integrity a small price to pay at that point um lab-grown diamonds and the impact that they've had on the industry really can't be understated the science is complex and the technology is sometimes a little bit confusing but at the end of the day it's your industry it's your business and it's your reputation that's on the line in these discussions if you have any other questions or want to learn anything more our tech team is always available at extension 4300 as well as on the web at stuller.com thanks for joining us