HyPro-Glas

The conventional processing and manufacture of raw glass into a functional component involves many steps. The corresponding process chains serve to effectively manufacture high-precision glass components, but are very time-consuming and resource-intensive.
Additive manufacturing processes can fundamentally improve the production of prototypes and small series made of glass, both in terms of costs and material and energy consumption. Currently, there are no commercial systems available for glass materials, particularly for the powder bed-based selective laser melting (PBF-LB) process. In previous projects, ifw Jena has already developed a semi-automated system technology for PBF-LB processing of glass. The process parameters for optically transparent melting of glass powder have also been extensively optimized.
The current HyPro-Glas project builds on the latest developments at ifw Jena: The aim is to develop a hybrid process chain for the production of optically transparent free forms from glass, in which high-precision components are manufactured using the PBF-LB process and then subjected to precision mechanical processing. In order to improve the surface quality of the components, the suitability of mechanical precision polishing and hot polishing with a CO2 laser for processing additively manufactured glass components is also being investigated.