who know's how to make dichroic glass

[Paul Hayworth]

Who know's how to make dichroic glass, in your back yard

[Mike Aurelius]

Dichroic glass, as it is currently available today, is a process of vacuum coating glass with various evaporated metals.

Unless you happen to have a vacuum coater in your backyard, I don't think it can be done.

[Steve Stadelman]

Bob Stephan had a vacume chamber and sputtering setup, he did strictly his own work and it was difficult to get it right. He spent lots of time wandering around at thin-film deposition conferences and technical seminars trying to glean bits of practical knowledge from people who look down their noses at NASA because the shuttle is an old design.

You can buy books about it but you cannot read them, you can talk to people who know how it's done but you cannot understand them.

It is a really weird esoteric discipline and if you do not have some sort of industrial background or someone who will spend endless time tutoring you you might want to forget it.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I did seriously look into doing it. It is not worth the effort. Firstly the footprint of the pedestal with the cryogenic chamber is about 20x20 feet and that's for a single sheet application. It takes a full three hours to coat a sheet of glass and requires a machine operator to be in full attendance at all times. Next, it's expensive. I could buy a sheet from Sanburg for 80 dollars, given my volume discount, which I still have and it was going to cost me about fifty dollars to buy the sheet and coat it. Th electric bill was staggeringly expensive, even if you had the Columbia river to back you up. Then, there's the learning curve of doing it right.

All in all, Howard is the way to go with this stuff.

[Eben Horton]

There was a guy at the Rosin show last Feb who had some mind blowing work that he coated himself- I guess he worked in the industry and saw what artists were doing with it and took the leap of faith..

he was very open as to how to do it. Plan on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars though...

Eben

[Pete VanderLaan]

The parts for the single sheet machine cost 20K and that was ten years ago. The five sheet unit was 80K.

[Victor Chiarizia]

bobs machine is for sale at around $18,000. will do a 20"x20" sheet i think....maybe smaller. needs it's own little room to house everything maybe 10 x 10.

hey i remembered my password...now i can post! thanks for nothing teck support, vic

[Pete VanderLaan]

Jeez.... I forgot my password. My dog peed on it....