Pingie: HTTP:: 3D Printing with Glass Now Possible

HTTP:: 3D Printing with Glass Now Possible
--------
Scientists at the University of Washington have recently announced that they have managed to develop a technique that allows them to print glass objects with a conventional 3D printer. The accomplishment, which comes one year after the same team showed that ceramics could be printed in the same manner, is similar to the established glassware manufacturing method known as pate de verre. Engineers and artists at the university's Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory were in charge of developing the new technology, known as the Vitraglyphic process.“It became clear that if we could get a material into powder form at about 20 microns we could print just about anything,” UW Professor of Mechanical Engineering Mark Ganter, who is also the co-director of the Solheim Laboratory, explains. He adds that, in a conventional 3D printer, a layer of powder is set on a substrate, and then software-controlled ink jets only apply binder-solution droplets where needed. Thus, a 3D structu!
re is formed. However, things are not that simple when glass is involved. The scientists soon understood that even very small glass particles could not readily absorb liquid. Therefore, they say, the method they developed for ceramics had to be considerably altered. “Using our normal process to print ob...
--------
http://news.softpedia.com/news/3D-Printing-with-Glass-now-Possible-122596.shtml
--------
This e-mail was sent by Experiment23 Inc., located in New York, NY
10163. To not receive further e-mails, please visit
http://help.pingie.com