ARI Product Review
Wonderful New Diamond Tester That Spots Lab-Grown Colorless Diamonds!
I recently tested ARI by Presidium, a new tester claiming to separate natural colorless diamonds from lab-grown. After testing diamonds from 0.15 carats up to 1.00+ carats, including natural, HPHT and CVD grown diamonds, I was excited to find it was accurate, fast, and very easy to use. It is for use, however, ONLY ON COLORLESS diamonds. Nonethelss, since colorless diamonds are the mainstay of the jewelry industry worldwide, and most fancy-color diamonds are accompanied by lab reports from respected labs, I’m still excited about it!
While there are other ways to separate the two (as I discuss in my book “Gem Identification Made Easy”) other methods require more than one tool, special lighting, or costly desk-top instruments. ARI combines everything in one small, fast, easy-to-use, light-weight portable tool requiring NO special skill, one you can take along to use anywhere! The SSEF spotter/UV lamp costs a lot less than the ARI, but with thousands of lab-grown diamonds now being sold as natural, ARI fills an important need for a tool that ANYONE can use to buy diamonds with confidence & peace of mind!
Antoinette Matlins, PG, FGA (Hon), is the author of 7 internationally acclaimed books on gems and jewelry, including award-winning “Gem Identification Made Easy” which received the coveted Benjamin Franklin Award for “Best How-To Book,” now in its 6th edition. Her books have sold over 1 million copies globally
A Quick and Useful Screening Instrument For Near-Colourless Diamonds
I received an ARI instrument by Presidium as part of my on-going research on portable instruments on the market to screen and identify natural and laboratory-grown diamonds. I tested 62 samples from my Education Collection used in the “ID of Laboratory-grown Diamonds” workshops worldwide. The suite ranging from 0.01ct to 1.33ct is comprised of loose and mounted samples: 21 natural diamonds, 18 HPHT-grown diamonds, 16 CVD-grown diamonds and 7 diamond imitations (3 CZ, 4 moissanite).
ARI performed as the manual said, screening “CVD/HPHT/Type IIa” diamonds from natural “diamond” and “moissanite” as long colors are not lower than J colour or Fancy colors. Its important to check the stone beforehand with standard instruments to make sure it is a diamond, and not CZ, otherwise it will give a false result. Other standard and spectroscopic techniques need to be used to separate separate natural IIa/IaB diamonds from IIa Laboratory-grown diamonds, as recommended in my latest book.
Branko Deljanin B.Sc., GG, DGA, FGA, DUG is President of “CGL Canadian gemlab”, and Director of “Gemmological Research Industries Inc”. He is internationally recognized as a diamond authority. He recently co-authored the 3rd edition of best-selling industry book “Laboratory-Grown Diamonds – Information Guide to HPHT and CVD Grown Diamonds” with Dusan Simic. They have reviewed the standard and advanced instruments for testing laboratory grown diamonds.