Karen Westland visited lampworker Helen Chalmers for 6 days over 8 months to fabricate custom Compound Parabolic Concentrators (CPCs) utilizing lampworking techniques. In this time Karen has learnt lampworking techniques suited to forming the CPCs in glasses with different thermal coefficient of expansion. Every two visits, new tooling was produced to ensure further refinement of the process as the materials, processes and outcome developed. This opportunity enabled access to lampworking to produce 50-80 lampworked CPCs in addition to connecting with a skilled craftsman to build on connections between physics and craft.
This research was funded by an EPSRC Innovation Placement