SoylentNews

eof [soylentnews.org] writes:

MIT News has a story on technology for 3-D printing developed at the school. [mit.edu]

Other groups have attempted to 3-D print glass objects, but a major obstacle has been the extremely high temperature needed to melt the material. Some have used tiny particles of glass, melded together at a lower temperature in a technique called sintering. But such objects are structurally weak and optically cloudy, eliminating two of glass’s most desirable attributes: strength and transparency.

The high-temperature system developed by the MIT team retains those properties, producing printed glass objects that are both strong and fully transparent to light. Like other 3-D printers now on the market, the device can print designs created in a computer-assisted design program, producing a finished product with little human intervention.

Both an academic paper [liebertpub.com] and a demonstration video [vimeo.com] are available.

Original Submission