Grades are one way of enhancing materials. Grades will apply a bonus multiplier on most, but not all stat modifiers. Grades can now be applied to any material (any item with "SGear Material" in the tooltip).

To check the grade on a material, view its stats in the tooltip (Ctrl key by default)

Possible grades: E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS, MAX

The MAX grade is only found in version 2.6.22 and higher

The material grader applies grades to materials. The grader requires a catalyst (see next section) to function. Catalyst is consumed with each grading attempt. No additional fuel or energy is required. Items can be extracted by hoppers and other means.

One interesting quirk with grades is they are not completely random. It follows a normal distribution (bell curve). That means there is an average value that is most likely, and the chance goes down the further out the grade is. So, both low and high grades are less common. The average value depends on the grader catalyst used.

There are five catalyst tiers, but only three contain any items by default. The items that can be used are controlled with item tags, so they can be overridden or added to. The tags are silentgear:grader_catalysts/tier1 thru silentgear:grader_catalysts/tier5. Each tier of catalyst is consumed the same way. Higher tier catalysts produce higher grades on average.

The default catalyst items are glowing dust (tier 1), blazing dust (tier 2), and glittery dust (tier 3).

In 1.15.2 and later, the material grader can re-grade materials. Simply put the graded item back in the grader's input slot. The grader will consume catalyst until a higher grade is rolled. This may take many attempts, depending on the current grade on the item.

Whether your lost your stuff in an unfortunate accident or you are a map/modpack maker, you can spawn in graded items with the vanilla give command. In 1.13.2+, you can modify existing tools with the /sgear_parts command, which also allows the grade to be set.

An item's grade is stored in its NBT, so graded items can be easily created with cheat commands. Note the NBT tag name is different in ancient versions. Modern versions use SGear_Grade.

Something like this:

1.14+: /give @p <item>{SGear_Grade: "<grade>"} [count]
1.12.2: /give @p <item> <count> <meta> {silentgear_grade: "<grade>"}

Where <grade> is replaced by the grade level (keep the quotes, not the brackets).

Here's a more specific example:

1.14+: /give @p minecraft:diamond{SGear_Grade: "MAX"} 64
1.12.2: /give @p minecraft:diamond 64 0 {silentgear_grade: "MAX"}

This gives a stack of MAX grade diamonds. This will of course "work" on any item, but it's only useful for material items.