Digital Glass Forming
Silicate glasses have unique properties including high transparency, low temperature sensitivity, and high chemical/electrical resistance, as well as low material cost and recyclability. Additive manufacturing provides the potential to create parts with complicated geometries over low production volumes as well as opening new possibilities for diverse applications ranging from optics to integrated lab-on-a chip devices. Our work is focused on printing optically transparent glass using Digital Glass Forming (DGF). This is a laser-heated, filament-fed process. It uses a CO2 or CO laser to locally melt continuously fed, small-diameter glass rods or optical fiber. 3D shapes are constructed by moving a 4-axis CNC stage relative to the intersection of the filament and laser beam. The molten glass is controllably formed by loading from the substrate and filament as well as surface tension. This allows the deposition of fully dense smooth geometries as well as free-standing structures including transmissive optical fiber. DGF can be combined with ultrafast laser machining to create a hybrid process with significant potential for optics, photonics, and microfluidics as well as low CTE structural elements.