The Vitraglyphic Process: Revealed

A wonderful video from Doctoral Student Meghan Trainor and Professor Mark Ganter of the University of Washington shows the entire process of producing 3D printed ceramics. The initial fragile print made from a glass powder formula is placed into a furnace for firing and solidification. 

 

An ongoing issue with the process, which is still under development, is the shrinkage that occurs during firing. The team is experimenting with a variety of mixtures to understand how best to tackle the problem.  

 

Via Technovelgy and YouTube

The Glass Car

An amazing video shows a behind the scenes look at the creation of a glass car - no kidding! It's almost completely made of glass. Shell Oil wanted to really show everyone how their engine oil works by making a see-through car, including, of course, the engine itself. The engine turns over, and you can clearly see the Shell Helix Ultra lubricant splashing about making the transparent car's engine parts all move smoothly.

 

Before you get too excited and want to print off a glass car of your own on your 3D printer, you must realize that the team who pulled this off had to hand craft more than two thousand parts and very carefully fit them together for this to work. So, no, you can't print out a glass car yet. Well, perhaps the ashtray.

 

Via YouTube (Hat tip to Matthew)

Glass Objects from Shapeways

The big news this week was clearly Shapeways surprise announcement: they now provide glass as print material!

   

Glass printing has been the subject of much investigation and experimentation this year, and now it appears that Shapeways has made enough progress to offer commercial 3D printing using it. Even better, the glass used is recycled - and you can recycle the prints as well. 

 

The process is similar to what we've seen in prior experiments: an ultra-fine glass powder is fused with a binder layer by layer, followed by kiln-firing to melt the glass bits into a rigid state in a Venus-like +750C oven. 

 

The new material costs USD$5.99 per cc, which is mid-way between their inexpensive materials (USD$1-3 for acrylics and sandstone) and expensive (USD$10 for stainless steel). The material is apparently yet another Shapeways "experiment":

 

The material is made from recycled soda-lime glass, the fine glass powder is sintered together and then fired in a kiln. The material is porous, opaque and fragile. The material feels a bit coarse to the touch. The glass prints can be best used for objects such as centerpieces, decorative platters and other design objects for the home. 

The result is not pure transparent glass. It's sufficiently opaque that Shapeways names the material "Milky White Matte Glass", and that's precisely what it looks like. But it is glass, and that's a great step forward. We're imagining all sorts of interesting objects that are better suited for this new glass medium. 

  

It's not quite the transparent glass you might be seeking, but we think this is a very useful addition to the every-increasing list of Shapeways materials. When will we see "Clear Shiny Glass"? 

 

Via Shapeways 

ProMetal's Experience

ProMetal is an innovative manufacturing company that uses advanced techniques such as additive manufacturing to get an edge. In a wide-ranging interview and analysis, RapidToday profiles ProMetal and their recent challenges:

• Identifying the right sales channels to meet the market
• Enabling customized versions of products
• Keeping consumer costs low

It seems that selling 3D items to consumers is not straightforward.

Meanwhile, it turns out that ProMetal is developing ways to print glass items with 3D printing. We've written about this before, but according to RapidToday, "none appear to be as far along as ProMetal, which has been working on the process for over a year." Check out the glass vase above (hand glazed).

Finally, ProMetal is developing their own 3D printer, the M-Print, intended to be released this year. The M-Print is intended for low-cost metal 3D printing, including iron and bronze and should be far less expensive than high-end competitors who focus on specialized materials or processes.

Via RapidToday

One Blue Ring

The guys at Open3DP seem to have made a breakthrough in their quest to develop glass-based 3D printing. Every week they seem to make progress, and this week we see a "semi translucent blue glass ring". 

 

There's no details on their blog to describe how they managed to create this magical item, but if this is the future of glass printing, we like it a lot. Color 3D printing is wonderful - but translucent glass colored printing is simply stunning. We can imagine a plethora of applications for this, not the least of which will be jewelry. 

 

Well done, Open3DP! (Does it make you invisible?)

 

Via Open3DP (Hat tip to Mark)

Shrunken Heads at Opend3DP!

The folks at Open3DP continue to investigate ways to produce 3D glass printing, and they've been quite successful so far. A recent post shows their work, but as one can clearly see in their image, a problem is shrinkage during the post-printing firing phase. Yes, that's right - the image on the right shows the degree of shrinkage by firing the original glass-printed object on the left.

This poses an interesting dilemma for future software makers: they'll have to include features that account for post-printing shrinkage. In the shrunken-head example above there's not much issue, but one can imagine the complexities that might occur with supports, tightly-fitting designs, multi-part assembly and designs dependent on precise dimensions.

Via Open3DP

More Glass 3D Printing Experiments

The folks at the University of Washington continue their experiments with 3D printing with glass, and it's looking even better now. Here are some of their latest results:

A glass pot, this time fired at a different heating temperature curve than previous experiments. Notice the glassy sheen. They're getting close!

A test glass puck, post-firing painted with Pebeo paint. 

Another test pot, this one accidentally broken - but it does look very much like a glass item.

Via Open3DP

Vitraglyphic Prints Still Opaque

Doctoral student Meghan Trainor describes her experience producing her first Vitraglyphic 3D print. Wait a moment, you ask, "what's a Vitraglyphic 3D print?"

Vitraglyphic printing is a new approach to 3D printing that permits production of glass or ceramic type objects, being pioneered at the University of Washington. 

Meghan writes:

This was my first Vitraglyphic printed at the Solheim Lab just a few weeks ago. David Rutten from Grasshopper (a plug-in for Rhino 3D software) was demonstrating how to use it’s parametric modeling capabilities to create designs in Rhino, so in this instance I used the Voronoi diagram mesh.  I’ve been exploring themes around man-machine interfaces in my artwork, ranging from the abstracted to the concrete, and this object/sketch is meant to invoke some sort of heart-like organ for a creature somewhere between living and machine.

And

The glass prints are still pretty opaque, but as Mark and the rest of the guys in the lab continue to experiment with firing rates, it’s looking like some level of translucence or transparency is not far off.

That's certainly good news. Clear glass capability would open up a huge range of new possibilities.

Via Open3DP