Researcher 3D prints world’s smallest wineglass with new technique

Researchers have 3D-printed the world’s smallest wine glass with a rim smaller than the width of a human hair. However the thought wasn’t to cater to extraordinarily gentle drinkers. Fairly, the glass was printed to exhibit a brand new simplified method for creating silica glass buildings for a spread of functions from telecommunications to robotics.

Developed at KTH Royal Institute of Know-how in Stockholm, the brand new method overcomes problems, akin to the necessity for thermal therapy, when 3D-printing important silica glass elements, says KTH Professor Frank Niklaus. The work is printed within the journal Nature Communications.

Niklaus says it may be used for custom-made lenses for medical equipment that carry out minimally invasive surgical procedure, micro-robots that navigate excessive environments, or filters and couplers for fiber optic networks, to call a number of functions.

One such fiber optic filter was produced within the research. The researchers present that the method can print gadgets straight on the tip of an optical fiber as skinny as a strand of a human hair.

“The spine of the web is predicated on optical fibers product of glass. In these methods, all types of filters and couplers are wanted that may now be 3D printed by our method,” says co-author Kristinn Gylfason, an affiliate professor of Micro- and Nanosystems at KTH. “This opens many new potentialities.”

The strategy drastically reduces the vitality wanted to 3D print silica glass, which usually requires heating supplies as much as a number of hundred levels for hours, says the research’s lead writer, Po-Han Huang, a doctoral scholar at KTH. “The benefit of our technique is there is not any want for thermal therapy and the glass can face up to excessive warmth in functions.”

One other profit, he says, is that the tactic can produce silica glass utilizing available, industrial supplies.

Eliminating the necessity for thermal therapy will increase the likelihood for the method for use extensively in numerous utility situations, he says. “The issues when integrating 3D printing strategies are normally completely different for various functions. Although optimization of our technique continues to be required for various functions, we consider our technique presents an necessary and obligatory breakthrough for 3D glass printing for use in sensible situations.”

So what about that wineglass? Is it actually the world’s smallest? In any case, folks have already 3D printed lots of demonstration objects, like statues and mannequin automobiles. Niklaus says the distinction is that this demo is in glass. “Positively no person has 3D printed a wineglass that consists of glass as-printed,” he says.