A Long History

Invented in 1960 and introduced to the industrial marketplace in 1961, 3M glass bubbles were first used in drywall seam sealers, mining explosives and furniture. Since then, manufacturers all over the world have expanded the use of these almost magical hollow glass microspheres into hundreds of applications in diverse markets, including oil and gas, recreation, paints and coatings, transportation, construction, mining explosives and consumer products.

1968 3M glass bubbles first used in syntactic foam buoyancy modules.

1992 3M glass bubbles used in pipe insulation.

1996 3M glass bubbles used in drilling cement and fluid applications.

2009 3M introduces 3M glass bubbles XLD3000, XLD6000, S42XHS and HGS8000X to offer cost-effective solutions in response to industry trends of increasingly deeper oil and gas exploration and production, as well as deeper wells and longer subsea tiebacks.

Riser buoyancy modules and wet pipe flowline insulation using the first glass bubble-filled syntactic foams were capable of surviving down to 5,000 feet. Today, advancements in the strength-to-density ratio of glass bubbles enable these materials to be used down to 10,000 feet, and development efforts are rapidly progressing to extend those capabilities to as deep as 15,000 feet.