Lego glass bricks are as strong as concrete

Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed 3D-printed glass bricks that are as strong as concrete. New Atlas Evenline, an MIT company, has developed a special 3D printer that can use molten glass as raw material.

In the process of printing the tiles, Evenline founder Michael Stern and his colleagues used soda-lime glass, the material used in most glassblowing workshops. According to the team of engineers, the glass tiles have a figure-8 shape, which is suitable for curved structures. They also have two small pins at the bottom to connect together like Lego blocks.

After printing the bricks, the team put them in an industrial hydraulic press to test how much force they could withstand. The result was that the glass bricks were nearly as strong as concrete blocks. The bricks were made of multiple layers and had a bonding feature at the bottom, which made them even stronger. The team also built a small wall with the bricks to test it. A paper on the development and testing of the glass bricks was published in the journal Glass Structures and Engineering.

The new bricks have several environmental benefits. First, they are made from recycled glass. Second, once they have served their purpose, they can be dismantled and reshaped into new shapes. Finally, if they don’t fit into a building project, the glass bricks can be melted down and 3D printed into other shapes.

“I’m excited about expanding the design and manufacturing space for challenging materials with interesting properties, like glass with its optical properties and recyclability. As long as glass is not contaminated, you can recycle it almost infinitely,” said Kaitlyn Becker, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.