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Virtual Symposium While I was in Germany the board had it’s next meeting and agreed to my proposal that next year’s symposium be a virtual (online only) symposium followed in 2027 by an in-person symposium. This will temporarily reduce our expenses, give us an opportunity to reach out to populations that traditionally have not attended a symposium, give the regular volunteers a much needed break, and start a 2 year planning cycle for future symposia. The virtual symposium will have most of the same events you are used to with the exception of hands on glassblowing. The virtual in 2026 and the in-person in 2027 will be will be planned by two separate groups of volunteers starting as soon as possible. Moving forward I hope to keep this 2 year planning cycle going. It would make hotel interactions much easier and put less time stress on the symposium organizers. Stay tuned as I find these committee folks and get them started. I will schedule a Town Hall Zoom Call in the near future to discuss this decision and the virtual symposium in greater detail with all interested members. VDG Meeting I got back last night from a great trip to Germany. It was a wonderful 2 day symposium attended by 165 folks from all over the world: Germany, US, Canada, Italy, Belgium, France Norway, Denmark, Poland, and a bunch of other places. The VDG hired live real time English translators and offered wireless headsets for us non native German speakers to use during seminars, business meeting and demos. It turns out English is the universal glass language, who knew? I sat in the VDG business meeting and met several BOD members. I hope that good connections have been started between the two organizations. In some ways the VDG faces the same sorts of problems we do: every year fewer volunteers to help with the work, mostly the same faces stepping up to volunteer, declining society enrollment while at the same time facing increasing expenses, fewer training opportunities for folks entering the field, business challenges from China and India which have rock bottom prices, not enough good quality content for their journal, ever increasing difficulty in finding a symposium location that is willing to allow open flame sessions, …. all this just like us. On the other hand, the apprenticeship training program in Germany is government supported, produces very high quality glassblowers and continues to function well. The Certification program (Apprentice Journeyman, Master) and is universally welcomed by industry and research, as a means of determining skill levels (and pay). The VDG has a board of governance to manage the business of the VDG and a second “board” of sorts which organizes events like the annual symposium. I am intrigued by the idea and will explore this a bit further. Klaus Paris organized a wonderful lunch conversation with the VDG magazine editor Thomas, myself, and the newly formed Polish society President, Pieter. We explored the idea of sharing articles across our Read More …

(Click on the presenter name to see a short bio.) Corina Guerra, Erin Mayberry and Grantt Mayberry -“Tips For Transitioning Between Different Types of Glass” Salem Community College graduates (USA) Gary Coyne- “Asking the Right Questions Lets You Make the Right Vacuum System” California (USA) Michael Meconi – “Continuous Improvement” Philips Healthcare, Aurora, Illinois (USA) Philip Surdam – “Plastic Safety Coating of Laboratory Glassware” ChemGlass LifeSciences, Vineland New Jersery, (USA) Michael Hengler – “Freeboard – The Key to Floating your Seven Foot Glass Boat down the River” Assistant Professor of Glass, University of Montana Western, Dillon, MT, (USA) Joshua Greenfield – “Writing on glass: flame, temperature, and solvent resistance of commercial writing implements” PHD Candidate (USA) This paper will examine the flame, temperature, and solvent resistance of a variety of commercial writing implements on both borosilicate and quartz glass. Each type of writing implement will be tested to determine if marks are adversely affected by different types of flame, various furnace temperatures, and common solvents to determine the suitability for a variety of applications. Both permanent and non-permanent solutions will be discussed. Chris Miller- “Precision Vacuum-formed Nozzle Fabrication” PHD Candidate, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Wisconsin (USA) Precision Nozzles capable of producing jets with diameters from 10-500 micrometers were fabricated for research in molecular beam scattering experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A borosilicate tube was sleeved over an EDM graphite mandrel, and then formed under negative vacuum pressure resulting in nozzles with superior symmetry and reproducibility. The mandrels tapered from 3.49mm, to a small linear 500um section, and were designed to produce jets approaching laminar flow. In order to achieve jet diameters below 500um, mandrels with slightly shorter tips were inserted into the nozzle and secured before carefully heating, pulling, and shaping the tips to the desired size. This allowed the majority of the nozzle geometry to remain consistent while the tip was manipulated during the finishing process. The mandrels were formed using a standard CNC lathe, and could be shaped to produce any nozzle with an arbitrary, monotonically decreasing geometry. Lee Mulholland – “Overview of the BSSG Exam & Competition Programs” Head of the School of Chemistry’s Glassblowing Workshop, University of Southampton. Highfield, Southampton (UK) This will be an outline of the BSSG examination syllabus & competition program as well as the role that the “Board of Examiners” plays in both. I t will be presented in three parts, starting with the BOE & then moving on to the exam syllabus & competitions. Klaus Paris- “Micro glass processing – hot processing of glass tubes under a microscope” Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Catalysis Research and Technology (IKFT) and Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) (GERMANY)