Re: [ATM] Microwave heating of glass

[David Weinshenker <daze39@earthlink.net>]

KR wrote:
> Hi all,
> I remain interested in heating glass this way. Look at this link.  -----

Link doesn't seem to be showing up...

I'm skeptical about how suitable an unmodified home oven
will be for useful optical work, but I could see it could
have some potential in an industrial setup.

I could see, for example, some value in a system where
the ability to focus the heating on a relatively localized
zone might be valuable: for example, instead of trying to
fuse a stack of sheets in a conventional kiln (which would
melt the edges first and thus trap air between the layers
which would remain as the reported "large flat bubble" defect
remaining after such attempts), it might be possible to start
the heating in the middle of the stack and work outward,
gaining more complete fusion. (Or do the same thing with
a long rectangular slab, working from one end to fuse on
layers?)

Aren't most normal glasses pretty "dark" at 10.6 um? Perhaps
a CO2 laser could be used to initialize the microwave-absorbtive
"hot spot"...

-dave w




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