Glasses

Shamash, Quest for Dicyanin, Cheap Science, Other Materials, Glasses

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Advantages

Harry Boddington made two types of aura goggles: Auraspecs, which used dicyanine A dye, and Kilnascrenes, which used a cobalt glass filter in place of the dye screen. Use of a glass filter would have these immediate advantages over a dye filter.

• Stability of color
  • Long life
• Commercial availability
  • Widely used in other applications
  • Large variety of types and colors
• Low toxicity
  • No / few issues with procurement
  • Lower cost

Nope, not lower cost.

After further investigation, it turns out that using technical glass filters may well be more expensive than using $100 a gram dyes, astonishing as that seems. The cost to make a set of two epoxy lenses with pinacyanol bromide ($68/gram,) is less than $6, while an experimental provision of test glasses for a pair of aura goggles was $240. And those test filters were tiny 1" glass that are very annoying to use!

There's a reason the advice to the Graduate was "plastics." It's still true.

Glass Types

• Borosilicate
• Soda Lime
• Low Iron

Suppliers

Suppliers You Can Order From

And they will actually send you stuff. Sometimes quickly, at reasonable cost.

• Gray Glass
  • Gray Glass: Theatrical Filters Stage Lighting gels
    • Stage Lighting technical specs & response curves
  • Optical Components
    • Kopp Standard Filters
    • Kopp Night Vision
    • Schott Glass Products
  • Industrial Products
    • Welder's Glass
  • Flat Glass gallery
    • Cobalt Blue - Soda Lime
      • This is the same as Devon 146 Dark Blue
    • Aviation Red Borofloat - Borosilicate
    • Aviation Amber Borofloat - Borosilicate
    • Visteon Blue
    • Blue Vycor 7901 (7904?)
      • Corning 96% silica, with cobalt added
      • Transmits in IR, UV, visible
      • 4mm - 19mm thickness, rolled and polished surfaces
    • Furnace Observation Blue Borosilicate
      • Corning 5331
        • Kopp/Corning 5331 spectrum This glass is useless for aura work. There is no sharp cutoff at 465nm - 485 nm; indeed, the glass transmits some light throughout the entire visible band.
      • Dark cobalt blue glass
      • 12" square blanks
      • Very similar to Devon 143 Medium Blue

• Edmund Optics
  • Optics and Optical Components
    • Bandpass Filters
      • Commercial Quality Bandpass Filters
      • Broadband Interference Filters

• Shanghai Optics
  • Good prices, reliable & competent
  • UV & IR products
    • Colored glass
    • Filters
  • Reverse engineering

Suppliers For Specifications

Ordering actual materials, not so much.

• Roscolux Theatrical Color Gels
  • Roscolux Filters - US
  • I am virtually certain that the Lambert and Cymaticized aura glasses use one of the Roscolux filters.
  • Candidate films
    • Roscolux #358 Rose Indigo

• Kopp
  • Glass Colors & Specifications
  • Kopp Filter & Scientific Glass Summary
    • Kopp 5850 UV Transmitting - Cobalt Blue
      • Very similar to Devon 146 Dark Blue
  • Kopp Glass Manufacturing

• Hoya
  • Hoya
  • Hoya Optics
    • Hoya Optics - Color filters
      • Color compensating - Cyan Absorbs red

• Glass Dynamics, LLC
  • Furnace Observation Glass
    • Cobalt glass, Corning 5331, borosilicate, color: cobalt blue
      • N/G for aura work.
    • Blocks UV, IR
    • 12" square blanks
    • refractive index 1.490
  • http://www.glassdynamicsllc.com/Materials.htm " rel="external"> Glass Dynamics Materials

• Macpherson & Company
  • MacPherson Specialty Glass
  • Cobalt Blue glass # 6515
    • Blocks red glare; does not block IR
    • Max dia 1 15/16"

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• AVC Aura Visual Concepts, Inc
  • Auralens
  • Cobalt Blue Filters This filter probably eliminates too much of the red spectrum, but I ordered a sample anyway.
    • I was unhappy with their responsiveness, and canceled my order without receiving any merchandise.