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Using the foundations of 3D printing and applying them to the ancient art of glass production, the team at MIT has created a glass printing machine called G3DP.
The machine works like this: the upper part is essentially a kiln, where glass is loaded in and heated up to 1,900°F. Below that sits an alumina-zircon-silica nozzle, which can programmed to make the same intricate moves in X-, Y-, and Z-space familiar to anyone who has seen a 3D printer in action. Shapes can be designed on the computer, and the G3DP will execute them.
In a paper scheduled to be published in the September 2015 issue of 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing, the team outlines why the process could be useful more than simply creating beautiful glass sculptures: the precision the machine is able to work at means there's potential applications in product and architectural design as well.
Additive Manufacturing of Optically Transparent Glass
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 24 2015, @12:34PM
A long time ago in a galaxy far away I spent a long time in the chemistry lab and at least back then it was still traditional for the supply room to have at least one master glass blower who could hand make most any piece of apparatus you could draw. I wonder with mass production and shipments from China if this still happens.
Being able to print your own weird condensers instead of buying or paying the staff blower (sounds obscene, doesn't it?) is going to be treated with cheers from pretty much everyone but the skilled glass blower. One little problem is he was a genius at working around stresses in the glass and operating the annealing furnace. I don't think a glass 3-d printer is going to be much use without a skilled glassblower to program and operate it, and the accompanying furnace to eliminate stresses. Yeah yeah they try to anneal computationally, good luck with that. My experience with plastic PLA 3d printing is the marketing is a consumer experience but the actual operation is very crafty. So likely you'll have one really good glassblower and three printers and two unemployed glassblowers rather than no glassblowers at all, assuming that lack of commercialization doesn't prevent the glass printer from being as good as existing 3d plastic printers.
Another novelty is some backwards states banned real chemistry equipment to make drug chemistry more dangerous, if you can kill more people and start more fires then the populace will turn against the bucket chemists, etc. Right out of Vietnam level strategy, we had to destroy the village to save the village and all that idiocy. Anyway the point is being able to 3-d print lab glassware isn't going to amuse ignorant texans who try to make private ownership of lab glassware illegal as part of "the civil war on some drugs".
Something not discussed so much is one interesting innovation I got from reading the paper (not the article) is they melted nuggets of COTS bulk glass, which is a lot cheaper than fiber. It would be interesting to have a 3-d printer that eats COTS cheap styrene (well, except for the smell, etc) rather than $30/Kg PLA fiber. I would imagine PLA is available in pellet form for cheaper than fiber prices.
It would be interesting to experiment with printed exotic support structures underneath a mirror. Obviously you're still going to have to grind and silver your telescope mirror but I wonder how closely they can print it to minimize grinding and if some insanely complicated under-mirror support structure would be lighter, or optimised for thermal stability, or optimized for fastest thermal change rate, or something else? If nothing else you could 3-d print in mounting holes/brackets, which would be cool.
I wonder if its optically clear enough to make scaled up ant-burners, so you could desalinate water using solar or whatever, while printing the lenses in place.
For a clickbait site the linked article isn't all that bad. The PDF of the paper is better.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday August 24 2015, @05:38PM
At this point, it looks pretty coarse and wouldn't be useful for anything requiring precision. Similarly, the result is not transparent because of the interfaces between the layers.
It's an interesting start and will evolve into more applications, but for now 3-D printing a heat-resistant mold still gives you much better glass.
(I do like the lights hanging from the ceiling in the video)
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday August 24 2015, @06:50PM
In regards to using bulk PLA, there are tools that extrude spools of PLA from pellets/scrap. However, in my experience recycled plastic really isn't worth your time for anything but high volume parts where you can gain experience with the quality of the plastic (thinking injection molding).
If you want a cheap plastic for 3D printing look at nylon (weed whip line). It needs venting and a hotter work surface, but it is the best compromise between price and consumer availability.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday August 24 2015, @07:54PM
Hmm the commercial fibers aren't much cheaper than PLA, or cost more. The food grade nylon is interesting. 260C print temp and hygroscopic... I'm liking my non-stinky PLA so much, though. I read these strange things about people running their heated bed up to 120C or 150C and I'm all WTF as mine barely makes it up to 90C on a warm summer day. That and any remaining PLA reside would probably catch fire (maybe even literally!) at 260C or so that nylon needs.
In a very slow and lazy manner I've begun printing the parts for another printer, a huxley, and I've been thinking about dedicating printers to specific plastics. So I could have a nylon rod rod where everything glows a dull red (almost), and a cooler PLA printer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @12:49AM
> Yeah yeah they try to anneal computationally, good luck with that. My experience with plastic PLA 3d printing is the marketing is a consumer experience but the actual operation is very crafty
All new tech require expert operators. It used to be that cars practically required a mechanic living over the garage. A few generations later and not only are modern cars nearly maintenance free, they can even drive themselves 90% of the time.
Don't underestimate the ability for software to catch up and then leapfrog human capability, especially for problems that are little more than the advanced application of simple physics.