Broke a Glass?

Someday You Might 3-D-Print a New One

By STEPH YIN

Posted 19 April 2017

Researchers now hope to make glass with a more
versatile, modern-day technology: 3-D printing. In a
study published in Nature on Wednesday, a team from
Germany presented a new glassmaking method based
on a “liquid glass” that can be shaped into complex
structures with a 3-D printer, and then heated into a
solid. The technique may reduce the time and costs of
creating complex or detailed glass pieces, and yield
high-quality glass that is smooth enough to make
lenses and mirrors, said Bastian Rapp, a principal
investigator at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology,
and an author of the paper.
Three-dimensional printing is more pervasive than
ever, yet it remains mostly limited to plastics, ceramics
and metals. People thought glass would just not be
accessible to 3-D printing, Dr. Rapp said. “We wanted
to close this important material gap.”
Other groups have 3-D-printed glass, including an
Israeli company called Micron3DP and a group led by
Neri Oxman at M.I.T.’s Media Lab. But Dr. Rapp’s
approach is different, according to Michael Petch,
editor in chief of the website 3D Printing Industry. The
other two approaches involve melting and laying down
strands of material, sort of as you would with a glue
gun. Extruding the glass in layers makes it difficult to
create a smooth, transparent object, Mr. Petch said.
Dr. Rapp’s team used a method called
stereolithography, which involves shaping structures
with UV light. They loaded a high concentration of
glass nanoparticles into what’s called a photocurable
liquid, which hardens under UV light. The mixture sits
in a container and is exposed, slice by slice, to UV light
that has been programmed to create different shapes
at each layer. The regions that are exposed become
solid. Heating the structure in a high-temperature
furnace, like a ceramics kiln, burns away the leftover
liquid and fuses the glass nanoparticles together.
Creating unique or intricate glass shapes this way has
the potential to be much easier, and orders of
magnitude cheaper, than the methods commonly used
today, Dr. Rapp said. Currently, shaping large glass
structures involves exhaustive melting and casting
processes, and etching fine features involves
hazardous chemicals. With this method, you upload
your 3-D design, and “the software does all the rest,”
he said.
Potential applications are manifold, from creating
skyscraper facades to making tiny devices for
chemistry research, according to Dr. Rapp. Since final
products are clear and reflective enough for optical
applications, the technology might one day be used to
make camera lenses for smartphones or components
for light-based computing.
People might even be able to design their own glass
products at home. “Maybe, in the future, if you drop a
drinking glass, you could 3-D-print a new one,” Dr.
Rapp said.
Dr. Oxman, at M.I.T., praised the new study as “the
most detailed demonstration we have seen of the
stereolithography technology” with glass. So far, she
said, Dr. Rapp’s team has demonstrated that the
technology works at small scales, on the scale of
centimeters — not necessarily the large, architectural
scales her team is targeting.
But over all, she said, “this work demonstrates a leap
in the right direction.”
LINK:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/science/3d-
printer-glass.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection
%2Feurope&action=click&contentCollection=europe&r
egion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&co
ntentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfron
Abelleria, Kenny Jessa Vem C. April 21, 2017

Hist.142 - Contemporary Europe TF/ 1:30-3:00

ARTICLE REVIEW 8

Glassmaking is one of the world’s oldest arts. Ancient Mesopotamians

and Egyptians made glass glazes more than 5,000 years ago, and glassblowing
was developed in the early days of the Roman Empire. Since the mid-1900s,
glass has been made in factories by melting sand then floating sheets of it in
vats of molten tin or you know, as a byproduct of testing atomic bombs in the
desert. The article mainly presented about a broken glass someday you might
3-D-Print a new one. Accordingly, a team from Germany presented a new
glassmaking method based on a “liquid glass” that can be shaped into complex
structures with a 3-D printer, and then heated into a solid. The technique may
reduce the time and costs of creating complex or detailed glass pieces, and
yield high-quality glass that is smooth enough to make lenses and mirrors,
said Bastian Rapp, a principal investigator at the Karlsruhe Institute of
Technology, and an author of the paper.

It was clearly presented the method they used and creating unique or
intricate glass shapes this way has the potential to be much easier and orders
of magnitude cheaper. Currently, shaping large glass structures involves
exhaustive melting and casting processes, and etching fine features involves
hazardous chemicals. With this method, you upload your 3-D design and the
software does all the rest. Thus, people might even be able to design their own
glass products at home. “Maybe, in the future, if you drop a drinking glass, you
could 3-D-print a new one,” Dr. Rapp said.

Furthermore, the author was fair in presenting data and potential

applications are manifold. Moreover, it is also beneficial for people who are less
knowledgeable about the possibility of a broken glass as useful for a modern
day technology.