One of my glass sculptures
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I see no reason not to print directly. It would only be a matter of working out the best carrier for the ground glass. You could create quite different effects depending on the "liquid" part of the paste. Something thicker that burns out in the kiln would make for a very nice sugary result, something finer would give a more sintered result.
Unfortunately for me it will be a few months before it's something I can play with, but we'll see.
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Shapeways used to offer glass that must have been printed in a similar fashion, but they discontinued it about a year ago. Might be something you could look further into.
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For my liking that is a bit too mechanical. It's a good use of the process but far too engineered for me. I like the idea of printing using an extruded paste with a much coarser glass content, far more organic and prone to esthetically pleasing errors. I've never been a fan of anything machine made, I do use machines for my work but they almost always have my hand controlling them.
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Hi, Box:
Is that laminated glass in the support arm of your sculpture? I like the lines. -
Yes Tim it is laminated, but it's not commercial laminated glass. I laminate the pieces myself using a water thin ultraviolet curing adhesive. Pre laminated glass is very difficult to cut, shape and polish to any sort of decent finish, and anything more than two layer needs to be cut by machine.
In this case it is two outer layers of 10mm and 3 inner layers of 6mm. all hand cut and polished. You can see that the edges are beveled, this helps with accuracy and adhesive cleanup among other things, and it's the reason you see the lines so well. I built myself a flexible belt system for getting into the tight curves, standard beveling wheels never go that small. I also use an ultra clear glass for these sort of things so you have more control over colour. The adhesives I use can be coloured so you can mix and match when you want, however the colour is only ever in the interlayer so from certain angles it disappears, sometimes handy sometimes annoying.
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And the "dot" pattern? Is that an embedded material? Back in my school days I experimented with metal intrusions in glass and ceramics. Just basic stuff. Those dots are also fascinating because of the optical effect.
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I could tell you Tim but then I'm afraid I would have to kill you, it's part of the Glass artists vow of secrecy, designed to retain the mystery of what we do and disguise the fact that it's all rather easy.
Read on at your peril.
There are quite a few options for creating these dots.
If it is cold glass you could mechanically attach the dots either by using clear or coloured half beads glued to the surface, or by sandblasting a dot into the surface from the inside or the outside which could then be coloured or gilded or they could be punties, which are lens shaped dents into the surface created using wheels to grind then polish ......Warm Glass, they could be glass beads that are fused into the surface in a kiln, or set into a cast
Hot glass, the dots could be laid out in their pattern then picked up on the hot ball of glass in the blowing process, or positioned in a blowing mold so that as you blow the bubble into the bowl former the gilded blobs are incorporated into the glass then a layer of clear glass can be added....
that's just a few of the options
As this still doesn't exist I'm planning to use some gold opalescent beads that I have and place them in the blowing mold so they are raised from the surface. As shown in the closeup below, the bowl is made from a thick base of clear glass with a thin skin of colour on the inside and the beads embedded into the outer face.
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And here's a very quick one for Oli, using his studio and an HDRI I can see how with a little tweaking you can really liven the glass up.
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You know, Box, as I was writing that question, it briefly occurred to me that it might be one of those "tell you/kill you" situations.
Thanks for responding--I'll be looking over my shoulder
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I enjoyed the explanation too, Box...guess when I kick the bucket I'll know whodunnit.
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