With the recent rapid development and interest in 3D-printing, the technology is greatly improving, however, challenges such as expanding the material palette available and producing prints with controllable and reproducible properties still remain. For glass 3D-printing, optical properties are key to a print's usefulness and success. Herein we provide a brief overview to direct and indirect methods for glass 3D-printing, describe how printing paste composition influences the opacity of the resulting print and report our efforts to use X-ray micro CT and thermogravimetric analysis to better understand how changes in paste composition lead to the changes in microstructure that are believed to control the bulk glass properties.
Michael P. Avery, Susanne Klein, Robert Richardson, Paul Bartlett, Steve Simske, "Through a Glass Clearly: The Challenge of Glass 3D-printing" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP31), 2015, pp 280 - 284, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2015.31.1.art00062_1