Conference Report on the 4th
Australasian Scientific Glassblowing Symposium 1999
by Chris Tomkins and Paul Siu
Published with the permission of Mr. R. Parrott, secretary of SGAA.
This is a report on our trip to Wellington, New Zealand October
21st to 23rd for the 4th Australasian
Scientific Glassblowing Symposium 1999. Our thanks go to the
organisers of the Symposium, Mr.Keith Holden and Mr. Grant Franklin
from the New Zealand Glassblowers Society.
The Conference Facility at the Gracefield Industrial Research Ltd.,
Lower Hutt, Wellington was used extensively and housed a well set up
glassblowing workshop. The conference included lectures, workshop
demonstrations, tours, trade displays and technical glass
competitions.
The opening address by Dr David Bibby, Science Policy Support
IRL, interestingly dealt with the New Zealand political and public
policy issues pertaining to research. He related the changes over the
last 10 years and requirements to have a vision for 2010. The
Industrial Research Ltd., operates under the NZ Companies Act and has
to provide a return to its shareholders, different to the Australian
Public Service. David commented on the skills of their glassblower
(Keith Holden) and his part in their problem solving.
Fred Morse
Key Note Speaker, from Hampshire Glassware, Southampton.
Fred
explained the history and development of the Field Ion Microscope
between 1963 and 1998. This was a very intricate apparatus and the
number of different designs over the years was very time consuming.
The early chambers using liquid nitrogen and liquid helium achieved
some very good vacuums while being baked. Fred’s talk included
presenting the delegates with some of his construction puzzles to see
what solutions we would have come up with, it was good to hear the
variety of other ideas.
Dr Ian Brown
Advanced Ceramic Materials IRL.
Ian explained the useful properties of ceramics for hard wearing
applications where metals would suffer corrosive damage. Advanced
ceramics are hard, tough and durable and have three times the strength
of a decade ago. The ceramic coating of engineering tools with
titanium nitride made them tougher and harder with better cutting
edges with lower coefficient of friction. There are medical
applications for using ceramic in hip joints to extend their useful
life.
The final part of the talk and tour was to see the ceramic tubing
being used as furnaces at 1500 Centigrade. These being connected to
mass spectrometers by a sealing type glass tube the making of which is
to be demonstrated in the next workshop.
Keith Holden
Industrial Research Centre.
Keith demonstrated the manufacture of Pyrex Glass to Ceramic furnace
tubes on his large glassblowing lathe using an intermediate glass
called Bluesil. The long slow preheating and the slow cool down
process was the key to a successful furnace tube. Running the Bluesil
on to the end of the ceramic to ensure the glass was thoroughly wetted
on to the surface made this seal work. If there were any overlap the
seal would crack which would normally start from a re-entrant between
the ceramic and the glass tubing.
Grant Franklin
Victoria University, Wellington NZ.
Grant demonstrated profiling on a small lathe using a rotating carbon
former which was on a spring-loaded arm, he made us a two tiered sight
glass. Comments and discussions followed from the delegates with
several useful modifications to the way the pyrex rod was fed into the
heated glass section of the sight glass.
Pilkington Glass Factory Tour
The tour of this plant showed the production of a wide range of
toughened and laminated glass plate. The toughened glass process used
various combinations of air blasts for chilling the surface, creating
a stronger exterior. The glass is zoned stressed and quality checked
with polaroid strain-viewers to ensure that the fracture pattern is
consistent in every sheet.
Tec X Presentation
by Roy Parrott, Flinders University.
Roy's PowerPoint presentation consisted of 48 slides featuring the
Flinders Art Museum's Exhibition, which Catherine Dale & Roy
coordinated in 1998 featuring the expertise of Flinders University's
support staff.
Technical Competition
|
Greg Purdy of Waikato University, Hamilton NZ was the deserved winner
of this competition with his glass model of the 1816 Robert Stirling
Engine. This was truly a beautiful piece of work and for me was one of
the highlights of the Symposium. This fully working model driven by
heat was immaculate in every detail and it was great to see what speed
it could reach.
Greg also gave a useful paper on 'Tricks of the Trade' which the
trainees found very enlightening and included the joining of
thermocouple wires.
|
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Emmanuel Bellantoni
Embell Scientific
Emmanuel out-lined the design and construction of a versatile mobile
vacuum system and trolley. This was not the ordinary old type manifold
by just joining a couple of greasy glass stopcocks and a few greasy
conical joints. This system consists of H.V. greaseless valves and
flat ‘O’ ring joints giving it flexibility and less frequent
lubricating of taps and traps.
Manufacturing Learning Australia
Glassblowing Training Criteria.
John Holmes, UTS conducted a discussion on the two competency levels,
which our Association and the MLA had jointly compiled. The Australian
Government will hopefully now adopt the Certificates AQF 3 &
Diploma AQF 5 nationally for all glassblowing training.
This had the full support from members of the SGAA, with them agreeing
with what had been written.
The Tour of the New Zealand Electric Lamp Manufacturer
Greg O'Hara, the production manager took us on this fascinating but
sad tour. It was fascinating to see the fully automated machinery
turning out 2.1 million light bulbs per month and sad because the
factory is to close at the end of this year so we were very lucky to
be there at the right time. The New Zealand Government had removed the
tariffs on lamps so the plant had been sold to Indonesia and India
because their wages were not as high and the bulbs could be made for
50 cents there. At this time 500 different types of bulbs were
produced over a year using glass blanks from Belgium & Indonesia
and the plant had made a $1.5 million profit to July this
year. Various sealing methods are used to make the pinch seals and
join on the filaments with no spot welding. The annealing process is
very rapid and the production speed is due to the running of the
carousel machines on two twelve-hour shifts. Despite the impending
redundancies the morale of the 350 staff was very high, with only Greg
being offered work in Indonesia.
John Penno
Technical Glass Products.
John enlightened us on some of those consistent myths that abound in
today’s world. Subjects like the old church windows having glass
that over the years became fatter at the bottom due to the glass
movement not being a real solid. The answer is the way the old glass
was spun leaving the middle and the edges a lot thicker and that part
usually was installed at the bottom of the opening. Another myth was
people perceived that the Hindenberg Air Ship exploded when in fact it
just burnt. The point he made was that Hydrogen is less dangerous
than most think, Oxygen is actually one the gases you have to be
handle very carefully.
John Holmes
University of Technology, Sydney - EHT Generator.
John explained his construction techniques and ideas he had when
building his Extra High Tension Generator, which is normally known as
a Plasma Ball. The method involved using a large bulb with silver
electrodes joined with a pumping tube for evacuation and then filled
with neon and or argon. The fabrication of the glass side of a Mobile
Phase Filtration Apparatus was also outlined. The problem to be solved
was to steer away from using porous frits, which were clogged when
ground with silicon carbide powder and replace the filter with a
stainless steel gauze that supported the filter paper. This helped
have less contamination in the liquid filtered.
The Official Dinner went well with the
presentation of the SGAA's Merit Award to Paul.
The Symposium finished with a joint meeting of both glassblowing
groups. All up it was a hectic couple of days but it was well worth
the effort.
In conclusion we would like to thank The Dean, Prof. Denis Evans,
Ms. Lesley Harland Technical Manager, and Mr. Hans Adler for their
support and encouragement to enable us to attend the Symposium.
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