Robotic color grading for glass: Additive manufacturing of heterogeneous color and transparency

Abstract

This paper presents a new additive manufacturing method for color grading of glass. Color-graded elements, ranging from product design to architectural scale, could filter light and view in a novel way through locally differentiated color and opacity, and produce color effects in space. Existing methods for manufacturing multi-colored glass are either not economic for building due to labor intensity, limited to surface applications or small scale objects made of resins or plastics. To allow for automated color grading of glass in two-and-a-half and three dimensions we propose a robotic multi-channel process. The multi-channel tool mounted on a Universal Robot consists of four compartments, containing red, yellow, blue and transparent glass granules. Colors can be mixed on the fly by implementing varying flow rate ratios along the print path. Loose granules are fused in a kiln at high temperature into color-graded glass elements. The goal of this research is to lay the basis for color-graded elements of larger size and volume with higher pattern differentiation for functional and aesthetic purposes.