Mandrel, ball and slice tools carve real concave and fantasy designs. Design them with true index-gear geometry, analyse them, render them, then cut them on your machine.
Nothing to install · nothing to pay · no sign-up to start
Every concave cut is carved into the stone's actual mesh, so the drawn views, the light analysis, the render and the cutting sheet all describe the same stone.
A cylinder on the mast. Radius, angle and plunge are solved from the stop the cutter actually uses: a meetpoint, a depth, or a stated width.
A sphere is a cylinder with a zero axis. Domino Effect's six dimples, in the drawings, are three ball settings on a two-fold pavilion.
A saw plane at an angle you set, with the sense of the cut printed on the sheet so it can't be cut backwards.
Ashton Gems designs by Larry Mattos · rendered by Pluto's own raytracer · studio light, turntable
Pokey is a three-armed spiral of 82 tiers. It went from wireframe to render to the cutting sheet, then onto the machine and out as the stone pictured. Render and stone share one geometry.
Design, Browse, Render and Cut share one engine, so the stone you analyse is the stone on the sheet. Plus the RI, specific-gravity, critical-angle, carat and yield references a faceter reaches for.
Any design becomes a step-by-step sequence. The next facet is lit on the stone with its angle and index, and the rough resolves into the finished cut as you work down the list.
Hundreds of cuttable designs with their drawn views, filterable by shape, gear, symmetry and RI. Import and export GemCad and Gem Cut Studio files.
| Tier | Angle | n | Index |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pavilion | |||
| P1 | 42.50° | 16 | 03-09-15-21-27-33-39-45-51-57-63-69-75-81-87-93 |
| G | 90.00° | 16 | 03-09-15-21-27-33-39-45-51-57-63-69-75-81-87-93 |
| P2 | 41.50° | 8 | 96-12-24-36-48-60-72-84 |
| Crown | |||
| C1 | 34.00° | 16 | 03-09-15-21-27-33-39-45-51-57-63-69-75-81-87-93 |
| C2 | 28.00° | 8 | 96-12-24-36-48-60-72-84 |
| C3 | 16.00° | 8 | 06-18-30-42-54-66-78-90 |
| T | 0.00° | 1 | Table |
Start from rough. Set the gear, mast angle and depth, press Cut, and the stone is actually sliced. Symmetry and meetpoint chaining do the bookkeeping.
High-definition mode. Studio or neutral light, spotlights, mirror base and box, spectral bands, ray bounces, Sellmeier dispersion: every parameter is yours to set.
Light return, fire and tilt, measured tier by tier, by tracing real rays through the real geometry.
Forty of Pluto's materials carry a measured absorption spectrum and a Sellmeier dispersion curve, so a tourmaline is dark for the same reason the real crystal is.
52 measured specimens sit behind those 40 materials, each one a laboratory scan of a particular stone, listed with its reference number and the locality it came out of. Pick the source and the render changes.
Every specimen plots its own absorption curve across the visible window, and opens out to show the ultraviolet and near-infrared the instrument also recorded.
Assign the α, β and γ curves to the stone's axes, then tilt it and watch the colour change the way the real crystal does.
Nanosital and colour-change materials answer to the light you put them under.
Turn the room over to ultraviolet and the fluorescent stones light up: uranium glass, and the eleven UV Nanosital colours, each with its own glow.
A parti sapphire's two colours meet on a real boundary inside the stone, so the zone turns as the gem turns. Mélange Nanosital does the same thing with two measured spectra.
Corundum, beryl, quartz, garnet, tourmaline, zircon, glass and synthetics, each with its RI and dispersion on the label.
Measured spectra from the Caltech Mineral Spectroscopy Server, the archive of George R. Rossman · CC BY-NC 4.0
Export .obj with a .mtl, open it in Blender, and light it however you like. Domino Effect, above, is Pluto's carve rendered in Cycles.
Export a solid .stl, send it straight to the slicer, and hold the design in your hand before you commit a stone to it.
Pluto is built hand-in-hand with my brother Rowan Newman, a competitive faceter. In 2023 he took five first places at one Guild competition. In 2024 he moved up to the Intermediate division and kept winning, with two stones scored within a whisker of a perfect card, graded facet by facet under the loupe.
That precision is what every design and guided cut in the studio is held to.
| Year | Class | Stone | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | I.11.3 | Intermediate | 99.69 |
| 2024 | I.9A.1 | Intermediate | 99.47 |
| 2023 | N.10.4 | Octagonal Brilliant · colourless quartz | 96.00 |
| 2023 | N.8B.1 | Std Brilliant, faceted girdle · topaz | 94.82 |
Drop a GemCad .gem or .asc, or a Gem Cut Studio .gcs, onto the window. It comes in as a real stone: drawn views, cutting sheet, light analysis, render.
Each design credited to its designer · imported, then rendered by Pluto's own raytracer · studio light, turntable
In Roman myth Pluto ruled the underworld, and with it every precious thing buried beneath the earth: the metals and gemstones hidden in the dark.
Unearthed is bringing them up into the light: a studio for cutting and discovering gems.
Open the studio and start cutting. Create a free account any time to keep your own designs.
