This post has been a while in the making; my apologies. It turns out that it is one thing to run an electric load at room temperature, and quite another altogether to operate in the confines of a super compact, 2000F furnace that itself is intended to operate inside a toasty 800F furnace – continuously. In other…

On a much more uplifting entry; we succeeded in melting glass (Studio Nuggets 96) on our machine for the first time last night! We got the crystal clear stuff up to 1100 Celsius (over 2,000F) and was nearly fluid as water! However, our thrifty SCR used to control the nozzle heater was not up to par for the…

Evidently in my last post I was reckless enough to challenge Murphy by taunting: “Looks like we should be printing our first glass tomorrow!”. It turns out that a couple of seemingly insignificant mistakes met for one big 7,000 watt ZAP setting us back weeks. Our machine’s (once perfectly working) sensitive motion controller took way more than it was designed for…

We have ignition! Our printer’s crucible was fired up for the first time (and on the machine) tonight with flying colors. She’s running 1,600F+ in open air (no lid), at about 2/3 power and using only a fraction of the planned insulation. Looks like we should be printing our first glass tomorrow!

A naked furnace frame wouldn’t run very efficiently, so time for some fluffy 2600F-rated spun alumina (industrial sapphire) blanket.

Once the furnace was re-designed (prior post), of course the next step is to implement it.

We now have our heat electronic control box installed on our great big printer and starting to test things out. Here our annealing oven is heating up for one of the first times.

We now have the print chamber finished and installed on our massive machine. The chamber will be operated at a toasty 800F during printing glass (it will be put to use for pizza firing undoubtedly after a days run) that allows the inter-printed layers to adhere (and at optical quality), grow without warping and or cracking and…

In order to control our stainless steel nozzle actuator from a more reasonable room temperature, where standard stepper motors merrily step to and fro, we needed to transfer the power to outside our 800F print chamber. For that purpose it seemed that good old rack and pinion was the ticket. Being able to actively control…

Our precious crucible cart has undergone its final transformation into what will likely become the key element of our glass printing machine. Unlike portland, refractory does not use good ol’ H20 for its chemical bound, so for refractory, firing is a key step. Next time you see our crucible cart it should be mounted on our machine!