Indeed. A method of making glass via a containerless processing system that I am aware of, is aerodynamic levitation, wherein a ball of starting material is sus

Indeed. A method of making glass via a containerless processing system that I am aware of, is aerodynamic levitation, wherein a ball of starting material is suspended in a stream of gas, such as Ar, and heated by lasers. This method is used in systems that tend to crystallise rapidly rather than quench to a nice glass, since the thermal mass of the sample is very small and you can take all the heat away instantly by tunring off the laser. Samples prepared by such a method are typically 100s to 1000s of microns in diameter. I would be very interested to hear how they would scale this method to industrial production, if aerodynamic levitation is how they made their glass.