Glass flowers start from 18×18″ pieces of flat borosilicate glass.  The glass is scored with a glass cutter in a grid (across and down) to make an x/y array of smaller squares.

Cutting running pliars break the glass along the scored lines.  Individual squares are broken apart by hand.

The final result:  when everything goes well, a stack of glass squares used to make petals for flowers.  When things don’t go well, a stack of glass squares and a stack of odd shaped waste pieces where the glass didn’t break evenly.

One of the early steps involves cutting the basic leaf shapes out of copper.  This was once done by hand, but now accomplished with a CNC plasma table.  Plasma cutting uses superheated gases to ‘blow through’ the metal.  For the rose leaves, I use 12 oz. copper sheet.

The start of a CNC run

Each leaf is composed of 3 -5 leaflets on a central stem.  The CNC allows me to cut this out as a single shape, with copper details as thin as (about) 1/16 “.  This would not be possible to do by hand.

A rose 'leaf' is composed of 5 leaflets

The leaf drawings are done in software and stacked together in the CNC program.  A bit of experimentation has yielded a process that cuts a whole 3′x5′ sheet in a single session, with a water fed assist on the plasma torch to keep the copper cool, minimize distortion, and leave a cleaner edge on the cut metal.

A water feed allows finer detail and minimizes distortion from the heat

The goal of the run is to have as many succesful cuts as possible.  Errors can lead to unused copper and wasted time.  This run had over 100 leaves, with 5 that were not succesful.  I have not had a large run like this go 100% good, though one time I came close with only 1 lost leaf.

A finished sheet. A few of the leaves on this one were lost.

The month of August has shot right by, but not without a few studio developments

I’ve been working on a new method to encapsulate my solar cells.  All of the solar panels that I use the artwork are custom, studio built from single crystal solar cells.

A bit messy, I know. But its better than it used to be...

The silicon wafer is the functional heart of the solar panel, but its thin and fairly fragile.  To protect from damage and water, the wafers must be sealed behind a piece of glass.  The process I’ve developed isn’t the quickest way to accomplish this, but the panels are very durable and the encapsulant works well with the structure and shape of the cells.

Four individual cells provide the necessary voltage to charge a battery

The pieces are stacked, solder, and attached to lead wires prior to encapsulation