WELDING A WELDER TO FUSE SAND INTO GLASS

The welding process reaches necessary temperatures of 1800 degrees of Celsius to melt the sand. And therefore the range of experiments was executed with carbon electrodes further.

The fusion unfolds in uncontrolled patterns where particles from the outside of the electrode position are rolling towards the center, where the most high temperature is located. Pieces are frozen top layers of sand particles and therefore are flat in shape. For the time of the experiment the size of glass is limited by the size of the bounding box holding the sand.

WELDING 4.0

To optimise the process, the tool to hold both electrodes together was developed. It lets to keep it in one hand, which makes the welding process be more precise and controllable.

Crocodile Clips

EXTENDER

WOODEN BRACKET SUPPORT

WIRE CONNECTION TO ELECTRICITY

After the development of the tool, the scale of the glass pieces increased. The tool might be used without any bounding box and therefore the fusing glass is not limited in size by the fabrication technique.

The experiment represents the ability of the approach to produce 3 dimensional objects. In this case it is displayed by layering. After finishing the layer of glass, the layer of sand was pured on top of it and then fused. Repeated several times with different thickness of the sand layer the process revealed the spacious glass object with porous of different size.

The experiment was focused on fabrication more geometrical variation, the straight line in this case. It was produced fusing 5 layers of sand together one by one. The piece with thin layers of sand is solid and is stronger than one with thick layers of sand, what made it to be porous and fragile.

Soda or sodium bicarbonate is used in glass manufacture to reduce the melting point of sand. In the experiment, the soda was added to the mix of sand with a ratio of 30%. As a result, glass pieces are more glass-looking, the sand melts faster and the glass layer is thicker. The model is partially transparent.

However with this technique the glass experiences more radical temperature differences. During the cooling time, the model is covered by lots of inner cracks, which directly influences its structural property.

Catalogue

The next step was to enlarge the resulting objects and check the ability to produce surfaces. Two square panels of 40cm side were produced, one flat and another in an anticlastic shape. The continuous pattern made by fusion made it to be solid. The glass panel has characteristics of regular glass, it is semi translucent and glossy. It required around 6 hours to produce one panel.

Then there was a search for the different variations in form and its structural characteristics to understand the material limits. Thus a range of cantilevering surfaces was fabricated.