MIT’s New 3-d Printer makes use of Molten Glass As A Medium

The researchers at MIT’s Mediated subject have invented a 3-d printer—G3DP—that produces optically transparent glass with the push of a button.

Developed in collaboration with MIT’s Glass Lab, the printer accommodates a “kiln cartridge” that heats up the material at a fantastic 1,900 degrees unless it’s molten. In a decrease chamber, the glass is softened thru a warmth therapy process known as annealing and funneled through an alumina-zircon-silica nozzle. within the video, the laptop creates objects by means of methodically laying down transparent layers of glass that look like right away hardening honey.

Mediated topic—the revolutionary MIT Media Lab researchers in the back of a silk pavilion constructed through 6,500 are living silkworms and a robot educated to weave architectural constructions—has to this point been the usage of the printer to create glass vases, prisms and other ornamental objects, if you want to exhibited in 2016 on the Cooper Hewitt in the big apple. on the other hand, Mediated topic’s director Neri Oxman tells ArchDaily that the expertise has the potential of applications on a much higher scale, like glass-printed constructing facades or fiber optic cables that transmit data quicker. “Now [we can] believe printable optoelectronics, or the potential for combining optical fibers for top-pace knowledge transmission by means of light, mixed within glass printed building facades. It also hang important implications for all things glass: aerodynamic building facades optimized for solar achieve,” she says.

[via ArchDaily]