A group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has succeeded on printing glass structure using a 3D printing process. The process was published recently and demonstrated at the Hannover Industrial Fair.
The process uses a very fine high SiO2 glass powder suspended in a polymer matrix. The polymer is cured with a light beam (stereo lithography) creating stable structures. The uncured material is washed out leaving the glass powder and the cured polymer in the intended structure. Through sintering the polymer is removed and a solid glass block is created.
Glass parts made by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with 3D printing
The advantage of this process is the high resolution this process can create. KIT reports on structure resolutions in the micrometer area, which is pretty impressive for a silica glass product and simple processing.
They believe that this new process has great opportunities in a variety of applications including data technology as well as in optical, biological and medical fields.
Analyst Comment
While the use of a 3D printer is quite unique in glass, the process of sintering pressed bodies made from glass powder is not new and has been researched for quite some time. The issue with these processes was often the quality of the remaining glass body, especially if the goal was for optical applications. Earlier attempts also used a glass powder made from a piece of glass, meaning that there was a second sintering step necessary that made it not really cost effective.
The 3D printing approach promises to achieve much finer structure resolutions in glass than is easily achieved with other processes. As a consequence it may be actually cheaper to go this route instead of subtractive processing methods (grinding, polishing, etching, etc.). What is still open for me is the question of the optical quality achievable in such a process. If this is feasible at all, it may be a good way to produce very fine optics. The competitor here would not seem to be glass at all, but plastic-based optics. (NH)
