3D Printing Industry
AUGUST 20, 2015
Michael Molitch-Hou
Breakthrough Glass 3D Printing Platform Unveiled by Neri Oxman & MIT
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Glass 3D printing holds a great deal of potential, not just for creating intricate home decor and lighting solutions or even to manufacture bespoke specs, though those are certainly on the table. 3D printing glass could render new methods for making fiber optic cables that are exponentially more efficient at transmitting light, and, therefore, data. And, while extruder manufacturer Micron3DP has been experimenting with the technology, Neri Oxman’s Mediated Matter Group at MIT has just unveiled a fully-fledged glass printing platform, dubbed G3DP, according to architecture site ArchDaily. collaboration with the university’s Glass Lab and Department of Mechanical Engineering, G3DP is a highly precise method for 3D printing optically transparent glass. Prof. Oxman explains to ArchDaily, “G3DP is an additive manufacturing platform designed to print optically transparent glass. The tunability enabled by geometrical and optical variation driven by form, transparency and color variation can drive; limit or control light transmission, reflection and refraction, and therefore carries significant implications for all things glass: aerodynamic building facades optimized for solar gain, geometrically customized and variable thickness lighting devices and so on.”