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Microwave glassblowing furnace

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For glassblowing, you usually heat your glass up in a furnace before blowing through your tube into it. This furnace usually consumes a lot of fuel and, as I understand it, it needs to be kept hot all the time. I don't know why, but this means it's expensive to run.

Glass, when it's already red-hot, absorbs microwaves [1]. Microwave heating is also very efficient compared to heating by flames, at least disregarding the magnetron and its driver circuitry. So, an alternative glassblowing furnace would be a microwave-based one, with a burner only to heat the glass until it's hot enough to absorb microwaves.

This could be more suitable for places that only do glassblowing once in a while rather than every day.

47/340 [2018-05-05]

notexactly, May 13 2018

[1] Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments, by [wbeaty] http://amasci.com/weird/microexp.html
See melting beer bottle video linked on the left [notexactly, May 13 2018]

[link]






       Hmmm...
not_morrison_rm, May 13 2018
  

       This is quite an excellent idea. Possible issues: (a) uniformity - I think the point of a furnace is that it heats the glass evenly, so that it deforms evenly when you blow it. (b) leakage - you need to be able to get the glass in and out easily while attached to the blowpipe, without getting yourself microwaved. But definitely [+].
MaxwellBuchanan, May 13 2018
  

       < video< Ahem "Madeline Flameworking Demo- glassblowing on the torch".   

       No additional charge.
not_morrison_rm, May 13 2018
  
      
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