By EurekAlert
Friday, September 25, 2009
A team of engineers and artists working at the University of
Washington's Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory has developed a
way to create glass objects using a conventional 3-D printer. The
technique allows a new material to be used in such devices.
The team's method, which it named the Vitraglyphic process, is a
follow-up to the Solheim Lab's success last spring printing with
ceramics.
"It became clear that if we could get a material into powder
form at about 20 microns we could print just about anything," said
Mark Ganter, a UW professor of mechanical engineering and
co-director of the Solheim Lab. (Twenty microns is less than one
thousandth of an inch.)
Three-dimensional printers are used as a cheap, fast way to
build prototype parts. In a typical powder-based 3-D printing
system, a thin layer of powder is spread over a platform and
software directs an inkjet printer to deposit droplets of binder
solution only where needed. The binder reacts with the powder to
bind the particles together and create a 3-D object.
Glass powder doesn't readily absorb liquid, however, so the
approach used with ceramic printing had to be radically
altered.
"Using our normal process to print objects produced gelatin-like
parts when we used glass powders," said mechanical engineering
graduate student Grant Marchelli, who led the experimentation. "We
had to reformulate our approach for both powder and binder."
By adjusting the ratio of powder to liquid the team found a way
to build solid parts out of powdered glass purchased from Spectrum
Glass in Woodinville, Wash. Their successful formulation held
together and fused when heated to the required temperature.
Glass is a material that can be transparent or opaque, but is
distinguished as an inorganic material (one which contains no
carbon) that solidifies from a molten state without the molecules
forming an ordered crystalline structure. Glass molecules remain in
a disordered state, so glass is technically a super-cooled liquid
rather than a true solid.
In an instance of new technology rediscovering and building on
the past, Ganter points out that 3-D printed glass bears remarkable
similarities to pate de verre, a technique for creating glassware.
In pate de verre, glass powder is mixed with a binding material
such as egg white or enamel, placed in a mold and fired. The
technique dates from early Egyptian times. With 3-D printing the
technique takes on a modern twist.
As with its ceramics 3-D printing recipe, the Solheim lab is
releasing its method of printing glass for general use.
"By publishing these recipes without proprietary claims, we hope
to encourage further experimentation and innovation within artistic
and design communities," said Duane Storti, a UW associate
professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the Solheim
Lab.
Artist Meghan Trainor, a graduate student in the UW's Center for
Digital Arts and Experimental Media working at the Solheim Lab, was
the first to use the new method to produce objects other than test
shapes.
"Creating kiln-fired glass objects from digital models gives my
ideas an immediate material permanence, which is a key factor in my
explorations of digital art forms," Trainor said. "Moving from idea
to design to printed part in such a short period of time creates an
engaging iterative process where the glass objects form part of a
tactile feedback loop."
Ronald Rael, an assistant professor of architecture at the
University of California, Berkeley, has been working with the
Solheim Lab to set up his own 3-D printer. Rael is working on new
kinds of ceramic bricks that can be used for evaporative cooling
systems.
"3-D printing in glass has huge potential for changing the
thinking about applications of glass in architecture," Rael said.
"Before now, there was no good method of rapid prototyping in
glass, so testing designs is an expensive, time-consuming process."
Rael adds that 3-D printing allows one to insert different forms of
glass to change the performance of the material at specific
positions as required by the design.
The new method would also create a way to repurpose used glass
for new functions, Ganter said. He sees recycled glass as a
low-cost material that can help bring 3-D printing within the
budget of a broader community of artists and designers.
SOURCE