Welding Glass To Metal Is Now Possible Using An Ultrafast Laser System, Researchers Report (phys.org) 99
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Scientists from Heriot-Watt University have welded glass and metal together using an ultrafast laser system, in a breakthrough for the manufacturing industry. Various optical materials such as quartz, borosilicate glass and even sapphire were all successfully welded to metals like aluminum, titanium and stainless steel using the Heriot-Watt laser system, which provides very short, picosecond pulses of infrared light in tracks along the materials to fuse them together. The new process could transform the manufacturing sector and have direct applications in the aerospace, defense, optical technology and even healthcare fields. Professor Duncan Hand, director of the five-university EPSRC Center for Innovative Manufacturing in Laser-based Production Processes based at Heriot-Watt, said: "Traditionally it has been very difficult to weld together dissimilar materials like glass and metal due to their different thermal properties -- the high temperatures and highly different thermal expansions involved cause the glass to shatter. Being able to weld glass and metals together will be a huge step forward in manufacturing and design flexibility."
He added: "The parts to be welded are placed in close contact, and the laser is focused through the optical material to provide a very small and highly intense spot at the interface between the two materials -- we achieved megawatt peak power over an area just a few microns across. This creates a microplasma, like a tiny ball of lightning, inside the material, surrounded by a highly-confined melt region. We tested the welds at -50C to 90C and the welds remained intact, so we know they are robust enough to cope with extreme conditions."
He added: "The parts to be welded are placed in close contact, and the laser is focused through the optical material to provide a very small and highly intense spot at the interface between the two materials -- we achieved megawatt peak power over an area just a few microns across. This creates a microplasma, like a tiny ball of lightning, inside the material, surrounded by a highly-confined melt region. We tested the welds at -50C to 90C and the welds remained intact, so we know they are robust enough to cope with extreme conditions."
Okay. Now going forward. (Score:3, Interesting)
And that will change after welding because ... ? In addition, metal and glass have different brittle vs. flexibility properties, so using them together seems like problematic use cases.
Re:Okay. Now going forward. (Score:5, Informative)
Not with Freakin' Laserbeams! (Score:2)
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Having worked with metal a LOT, the article would not be able to live in both the cold of winter and the heat of summer without shattering the glass.
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Solved in 1906. See also: vacuum tube.
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Solved in 1906. See also: vacuum tube.
I think this is something different altogether.
Yes, you could join metal and glass before to some degree, but this sounds like it's a technique that forms a different kind of bond or join.
Re: Okay. Now going forward. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, the vacuum tube makers melted the glass and pressed it around metal rods, made from an alloy with the same thermal expansion as glass.
Re:Okay. Now going forward. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Do not underestimate the power of the dark side!
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There's also this longer video of making nixie tubes [youtube.com].
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So people prefer tubes because they do a imprecise job of modifying audio?
Re:Okay. Now going forward. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not welding, but is more akin to soldering. It's very troublesome to get molten glass to wet a metal, keep the bond when cool, and avoid problems with thermal expansion differences between the metal and glass. This was first solved in the 1800s by using platinum as glass does wet it and its expansion is similar to glasses used in scientific equipment of the time and in early vacuum tubes and incandescent bulbs. After that things got fiddly. Being able to weld metal to glass means a lot of that and its complications can be avoided.
See this article on glass-to-metal sealing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Not so much welding. but bending glass around metal to make an airtight connection. You can take glue or resin and have it cure with metal in it, your are not welding them together, but just submerging the metal in it. Being the resin, glass and dried glue, is solid, friction will hold it in place.
On the 1906 Vacuum tubes if you were to polish those wires to be super smooth, and you wiggle the exposed wires you will probably end up moving the wire from the glass.
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I suspect most of the uses for this welding will be at a very small scale (sensors, etc), and I think expansion might be more tolerable there.
I don't expect a lot of practical large-scale/mechanical applications or uses for it, but I've been wrong before. Who knows, maybe they'll build bridges using the technique.
Re:Okay. Now going forward. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see Cell phone makers using the technology to get rid of bevels. Because bevels are bad, because we all want the phone to interact to the fact that our hands like to cup around a device.
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Good luck repairing this one.
~Tim
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Glass to metal seal? (Score:2)
been doing that for a long long long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I don't think our throwaway culture cares much. We keep using aluminum for consumer goods because it looks cool and spiffy, even though said items keep cracking due to metal fatigue.
I'm sure Apple will be among the first to seriously apply metal-to-glass welding... whether it works well or not.
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I think Aluminum is popular because it is lightweight, doesn't rust, easily recyclable and is rather cheap.
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Windows for vacuum chambers, gas discharge tubes, and high power flashlamps all require good metal to glass seals. There are many use cases where their performance is highly limited by the temperature limit of that seal, so anything that improves that will find many uses. The way some vacuum windows are done is to have an intermediate material that wets on stainless and that the glass wets onto, so it is more akin to soldering than welding, especially when that metal melts or softens before the glass. Di
Re:Okay. Now going forward. (Score:4, Informative)
And that will change after welding because ... ?
Because the temperature range they seem to be interested in is -50C to 90C whereas welding requires much much higher temperatures; for instance around 1700C for glass.
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I guess they are using pre-tensioned glass, like they use on phones. Basically they pre-tension it and fill the micro imperfections with some secret sauce. That way when it is forced to change shape by thermal changes or by blunt force trauma it doesn't crack.
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And that will change after welding because ... ?
You are thinking way to traditionally. Firstly the smaller you make thermal expansion the less likely it is to create severe stress. Don't think of this as tradidional welding as much as micro gluing.
In addition, metal and glass have different brittle vs. flexibility properties, so using them together seems like problematic use cases.
Define your use cases. Are you thinking building structural equipment, don't do that. Bonding of materials with dissimilar properties open up a world of new engineering opportunities especially for instrument and electromechanical equipment.
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We have things like, Cars, Cell Phones, Buildings... That are made from glass and metal, we still want to connect the two materials together, however we either need to glue it to the metal, have the metal bolted, or bent to cup the glass (Technically you can bend the glass to cup the metal too, but that is much harder to do), Holes drilled and bolted in, or just a tight friction fit (often using a gasket).
Also much like how Metal and Concrete have different properties, they are often used together (rebar)
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Let's not use it in cars, cell phones or buildings though. The glass in those things needs replacing from time to time.
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Not anymore! We'll just throw them away when they break. Have you not kept up with the modern consumer economy?
Scottie... (Score:2)
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Get me some transparent aluminum, now!
That's been commercially available for years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
90 C? (Score:2)
I'm not sure I'd consider 90 C to be "extreme conditions", considering boiling water is something one can expect to be able to be handled by either metal or glass, and therefore conditions one might expect a metal-glass weld to withstand.
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Indeed, particularly in the aerospace/defense industries. Rockets/spaceplanes and probably supersonic aircraft have to withstand heat far beyond 90C, where they might want to put glass.
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For electronics and optics uses that is rather extreme. 90C means it can be used in the hottest deserts or inside most operational electronics, and machines.
Not necessarily for cooking, or aerospace type of stuff.
Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
Joining glass and metal like this has been kind of a "holy grail" for a lot of engineers and scientists, and is likely to enable the creation of some amazing stuff.
This technique is going to produce things that were previously impossible to manufacture; sensors, displays, and touch-sensitive controls, just to name a few. The process could end up being like the invention of the laser was- a solution looking for problems to solve.
When the first lasers became commercially available, a lot of engineers and designers had no idea what they might be good for (and rightfully so). Sure, lasers were cool, but what could you actually do with them?
It didn't take long to figure out the answer was "all sorts of cool shit". And laser LEDs took it to a new level; suddenly you could put an actual fucking laser in practically anything and it didn't require a lot of power. The future had arrived and it was full of lasers.
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I thought transparent aluminum was the "holy grail."
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How come I don't have one on my head yet?
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Will make it easier to sneak into prison I guess...
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That's why they were called 'slider' phones.
Whole new class of right-to-repair abuses (Score:1)
This makes possible a whole new generation of right-to-repair abuses. What happens when a smartphone's glass front (and back?) can be permanently welded to the rest of the body, not using screws nor even adhesive? Can you imagine vehicles with windshields welded directly to the frame?
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well insurance companies sure will imagine those rock hits and take care of upping the premiums.
New iPhone incoming (Score:2)
I suspect Apple will do some interesting design experiments with this process. If I were Cook Iâ(TM)d have some of my people at this lab already.
Jings (Score:5, Informative)
For the benefit of American readers, Heriot-Watt is in Edinborough. That's in Scotland.
Re: Jings (Score:2)
Scotchland? I knew a guy called Jock from Scotchland. Do ya know him?
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The correct pronunciation is ''Embra'', unless you come from Glasgow. Then it's ''Buncha stuck up bastids''.
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3D printers are obsolete? (Score:2)
Does this mean 3d printers are obsolete? We can hope.
I can remember when every other story here was about how they were going to usher in a new industrial revolution and all that shite.
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There is still a lot of growth in 3d printing.
Today's 3d printers are a lot like the 9 pin dot matrix printers 40 years ago. They are getting cheaper all the time, They often can get the job done, but its output is kinda blocky, and prone to a lot of problems. Where back 40 years ago, your dot matrix will work for for informal documents, something formal still needed to be typed with a typewrite (or at least done with an expensive impact printer). Over time Dot matrix printers got higher resolutions, and
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3D printers have certainly revolutionized prototyping or one-off development. So don't knock it until you've tried it. Compared to other manufacturing techniques, filament deposition manufacturing is still very slow and crude (and likely will always be on the crude side). But it has its place.
You can go on Amazon [amazon.com] right now and buy the Ender 3 3D printer for under $250 that works amazingly well right out of the box (after some minor assembly). All I've done is calibrate the bed and use the default setting
All the details from the horse's mouth (Score:4, Informative)
Apple just peed in their pants a little bit (Score:1)
Pics (Score:2)
or it didn't happen
Set in stone (Score:2)
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So, what's the bane part?
In reality though, I suspect t won't get used much for the same reason traditional adhesives are rarely used: when you bond something to a facet of a gem, you change it's optical properties. That's a problem, especially for diamonds, where the sparkle from the internal reflections of a well-cut gem is pretty much the only reason it has any value to jewelers.
More informative article with pictures (Score:2)
JB Weld Rediscovered? (Score:3)
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windows using aerogel (Score:2)