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3D-printer is red-hot glass
A fragment of a vase with printed color change glass during printing
The laboratory glass Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT Glass Lab) have developed the world's first machine that prints objects of arbitrary shape of an optically transparent glass. Process technology called G3DP allows you to adjust the transparency and color of the glass, the reflection coefficients and refraction. All this opens up opportunities for the production of a completely incredible items that can not be produced by conventional methods.
If we look at history, the first transparent glass samples obtained in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, about 4,500 years ago. Recipes manufacturing and processing of this unique material is kept in strict confidence. Now the glass products can be shaped through blowing, molding, sintering of the individual parts, and so on. D. The physical properties depend largely on the manufacturing method.
With the development of human civilization to invent new methods for manufacturing glass products. In the Roman Empire invented the metal tube for blowing glass, and in the industrial age - float process for the mass production of flat float glass in industrial scale. Each time such discoveries have led to the emergence of a myriad of new applications of the material.
Perhaps the new process technology, invented at MIT, also lead to new ways to use the glass.
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