Astroneer Glass Guide: How to Make It and What It Crafts

Glass is one of Astroneer's refined resources, and several useful midgame items depend on it. The trick is not the smelting itself. It is getting the right base material and having the furnace chain ready before the recipe becomes useful.

How to Make Glass in Astroneer

Glass is made by smelting Quartz in a Smelting Furnace. Before that can happen, a few basic machines need to be built.

1. Use the Backpack Printer to make a Small Printer with 1x Compound.
2. Place and power the Small Printer.
3. Use the Small Printer to build a Medium Printer with 2x Compound.
4. Place and power the Medium Printer.
5. Use the Medium Printer to craft a Smelting Furnace with 2x Resin and 1x Compound.
6. Connect the Smelting Furnace to power.

Once the furnace is running, collect Quartz and place it in the input slot. Each Quartz becomes Glass after smelting.

Quartz can be found on every planet, but there are cleaner ways to get it if the caves are being uncooperative. Put two full Soil Canisters into a Soil Centrifuge to receive 4x Quartz per cycle. A Trade Platform can also exchange 1x Scrap for 2x Quartz.

That makes Glass fairly dependable once the base has a furnace and either steady soil collection or scrap production. Early on, the real cost is usually the setup, not the Quartz.

Glass Crafting Recipes

Glass is used across multiple printer tiers, mostly for storage, solar power, and advanced base modules.

Backpack Printer

• Oxygen Tank: 1x Glass

Small Printer

• Medium Solar Panel: 1x Glass and 1x Copper
• Medium Resource Canister: 1x Glass and 1x Plastic
• Medium Fluid & Soil Canister: 1x Glass and 1x Plastic
• Medium Gas Canister: 1x Glass and 1x Silicone

Medium Printer

• Chemistry Lab: 1x Glass, 1x Ceramic, and 1x Tungsten
• Atmospheric Condenser: 1x Glass, 1x Plastic, and 1x Iron
• Large Resource Canister: 1x Glass, 1x Titanium, and 1x Nanocarbon Alloy
• Large Solar Panel: 1x Glass, 1x Copper, and 1x Aluminum Alloy
• Large Wind Turbine: 1x Glass, 1x Ceramic, and 1x Aluminum Alloy

Large Printer

• Solar Array: 1x Glass, 1x Copper, 1x Graphene, and 1x Aluminum Alloy

Glass becomes especially important when building the Chemistry Lab, since that machine unlocks many composite materials. If progression feels stalled, Glass is often one of the first resources worth producing in bulk.