[HN Gopher] A 3D-printable quartz glass for high-performance app...
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A 3D-printable quartz glass for high-performance applications
Author : Bluestein
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-08-06 20:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lithoz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithoz.com)
| itishappy wrote:
| Mechanical properties so desirable they mentioned it twice! I
| would love to see a demo of the optical performance (such as a
| polished flat).
| Bluestein wrote:
| Indeed. I noticed that emphasis.-
|
| There has to be some drawbacks that are not mentioned and I'd
| be curious.-
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There is one sentence worth of information here. Can you share
| more?
| Bluestein wrote:
| Am intrigued myself. Will, opportunity permitting.-
|
| PS. This ...
|
| - https://www.glassomer.com/technology.html
|
| ... might be a nice starting point.-
|
| To wit:
|
| ""Glass outperforms polymers in many applications and is
| unmatched in its combination of high thermal, chemical
| stability paired with high transparency. However, today
| customers often use polymers instead of glass - because glass
| shaping is inherently more difficult than polymer shaping.
| Glassomer changes that.""
|
| The applications - it seems to me particularly - in
| optoelectronic circuits would be tremendous.-
|
| PS. This quartz process and product is 3D-printable and
| moldable, as if it were plastic.-
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The video here is interesting.
|
| > The applications - it seems to me particularly - in
| optoelectronic circuits would be tremendous.
|
| Research level optics is very high quality glass [1], with
| surface irregularity down to 100s of nm. But the company is
| trying to sell lenses [2], so perhaps for some cheap
| commercial applications you can create nice lenses using this
| method. That would be still be excellent.
|
| [1] https://www.thorlabs.com/newgrouppage9.cfm?objectgroup_id
| =12...
|
| [2] https://www.glassomer.com/products/lenses.html
| Bluestein wrote:
| Nicely found.-
|
| > with surface irregularity down to 100s of nm.
|
| That is an amazing level of precision.-
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| To give this some fun context, carbon atoms are roughly
| 0.1 nm across. So that's means little bumps of 100s or
| 1000s of atoms are allowed on the surface.
|
| Might seem bad at first glance, but I think it just
| points to how small atoms really are. Besides, such bumps
| don't really effect the light being used.
|
| Coming back to 3D printing, if their surface irregularity
| is two orders of magnitude worse, that means 100k atom
| bumps. Really speaks to how difficult these engineering
| challenges are.
| jcims wrote:
| I wonder if you can change the index of refraction inside the
| bulk material. Might be cool for this kind of thing where you can
| make passive classifiers.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/neural-network-in-glass-requ...
| lokimedes wrote:
| Now just imagine some future civilization digging up a 300B
| neuron LLM glas cube, casting the oddest shadow.
| timdellinger wrote:
| My take on the press release is that they're announcing a
| collaboration between two companies.
|
| Lithoz uses photopolymerization to 3-D print a variety of
| ceramics, and is in the business of selling 3-D printers.
|
| Glassomer makes the "ink" - they've got a few patents on silica +
| binder dating back to 2016.
|
| All of this is similar to many things that have been done in the
| scientific literature (e.g. Nature Materials volume 20, pages
| 1506-1511 (2021)). They've put it into production and made it
| purchasable.
|
| I'm not up on state-of-the-art, so I'm not sure if this has any
| features that differentiate it from competitors. I'm not seeing
| any surprises.
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(page generated 2024-08-07 23:00 UTC)