03/19/2018
Molten Aura Labs Introduces:
SANDCRAFTED® Borosilicate Colors
We are extremely excited to finally announce something we've been working on for years! Our development of new colors that are made from 100% raw materials represents a massive effort by Molten Aura Labs to improve USA Made borosilicate color quality and standards.
Our unique process begins with crystalline quartz silica. That silica gets combined with high-purity chemicals, then melted into glass at temperatures exceeding 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a vastly improved process and allows us to evolve past the industry-standard re-melt product.
Every element we use in the glass affects it's working characteristics in some way. No strong color is going to work exactly like clear. However, we go to great lengths to ensure that the balance of CTE and viscosity ensures compatibility with the NIST Borosilicate standard (3.3 x 10-60). And having complete control over the composition allows us to minimize undesirable traits while maximizing color saturation and usability.
Why make SANDCRAFTED® colors?
Simply put, we wanted stronger colors without sacrificing workability. To us, the industry standard process of buying clear glass, grinding it into powder and adding small amounts of colorants, is outdated and inflexible.
Clear borosilicate is essentially 81% Silica, 13% Boron, 4% Alkali, 2% Alumina. As soon as you add anything to the clear cullet to colorize it, you alter that ratio, changing its working properties. With few exceptions, you cannot develop strongly colored, perfectly compatible glass using this method. And now we are seeing that even those few exceptions are being "watered down" to minimize their own inherent issues such as boiling, excessive air content, or color burnout.
The obvious question is, "why not make colored borosilicate from scratch?". It didn't take us long before we learned why it wasn't already being done. It's hard. There's no easy way to melt 81% silica and produce pristine, strongly colored, flame-workable glass that measures in at 33CTE.
But our desire to push the boundaries of glass technology and our vision to create deep, vibrant colors for the borosilicate palette, drove us to persist. If you are familiar with painting and the process of mixing colors, then you know that colors are the strongest "straight from the tube", so to speak. As soon as you mix a color with any other color, it loses intensity. Painters have the luxury of starting with extremely saturated colors, allowing for the maximum range of hue, saturation, and value in the final work. In a similar way, we want to give glass artists a deeper toolset to choose from.
Our vision is to propel a new generation of borosilicate artwork forward with the richness and optical clarity that has been a staple in soft glass for centuries. We see SANDCRAFTED® glass as the logical next frontier for discerning borosilicate artists.
In addition to several new AuraTones™, we are very proud to bring you the industry's first Gold Ruby and Gold Amethyst!
This all sounds expensive. Are these going to cost more than my usual colors?
This new process is much more advanced and intensive and requires completely different equipment, tools, and crucibles than other companies are using. That means the production costs are higher. We run a very lean operation and we're doing everything we can to optimize this process. As we continue to streamline the production and obtain higher volumes per cycle, we will pass the savings on by lowering prices.
And of course, the Gold Ruby and Gold Amethyst are going to cost more because they are made with actual gold.
That being said, you can easily thin the colors out by layering clear over or under them and they will still look amazing. You can effectively double or even triple your yield by adding clear and it will still look more saturated than our competitor's transparent pinks and purples.
Visit moltenaura.com/laboratory to read more about our groundbreaking new process and glass colors.
