Bending Sheet Glass with Lazers and Gravity

A brand new Fraunhofer technique is allowing for the bending and complex shaping of sheet glass. A laser is used to accomplish this difficult task, and the end result is new designs and shapes that we may have never seen before. This is a huge step forward for architects, as they can now use sheet glass as a viable building piece and shape it any way they want. 

So how is this accomplished? Scientists begin by heating the extremely thin piece of glass, about 4 mm, to just below the point where the glass would melt. After this, they begin to set up the laser. A path and series of movements is programmed into a computer which controls the laser. The laser moves on a path, stops, and changes direction many times to accomplish this. Now gravity does its job. At the points where the laser has heated the glass enough to melt, the glass begins to drip down at those spots, similarly to honey. This leads to many shapes and designs being created. This technique works so well with sheet glass, because unlike metal, which has a definitive melting point, glass can be heated up to a point where it is not melted, but rather malleable, making it much easier to shape.

So why is this such a big deal? Well, now architects and designers have a brand new material to work with, one much more efficient in creating intricate designs than other materials previously used. Tobias Rist, one of the researchers on this project, said "Thanks to our technique, manufacturers have a cost-effective way of producing extremely customized glass objects in small batches or even as one-offs," So, it is much more cost-effective and useful.

Peyton Phillips