Okay for making cutouts in GLASS? - Sydney, AU

[JJ Glass]

Hi everybody, I just found this site and would be interested in building an MM, with some modifications for glass routing and shaping. Modifications being mostly lower table with water outlet and two or three waterjets cooling the bit.

Has anybody ever tried it.:)

[sailfl]

Jo,

There hasn't been any documented build like that.

[MACHINEMAN]

Jo
If it has'nt been done, 10/10 mate dive in and do it. This site has lots of really keen and helpfull memebers.

[smreish]

...no, but you have my keen eye on this idea now :)

[Gerald D]

See this thread: Cutting glass - would it work? (http://www.mechmate.com/forums/showthread.php?t=612)

[JJ Glass]

Hi Gerald,

let me be a bit more clear, I am more interested in milling and polishing than cutting, I cut manually, as I mostly manufacture glass splashbacks and shower screens I have no need to cut in bulk. The milling has to be exact, and I was thinking of cutting the glass manually about 5 mm larger and milling it down with the MM. It is not for the square cuts as I have a polisher for that, but there are a lot of inverted corners and power points involved.

[Greeny]

Hi Jo,

I am currently building an MM, but not for glass work.
However i do have alot of experience with glass CNC machines.
I worked for a number of years operating & maintaining intermac groove machines and intermac edge machines.
From your description, it sounds you are thinking about an edger.
I think modifying an MM to do edgework would be possible but very difficult.
Problems i can see are:

Rigity & power of the machine.The intermacs we use are big powerful beasts that weigh in at about 6 tonnes.
The spindle is very powerful & has auto tool change as at least 3 tool changes are required (Coarse grind, med grind, polish).
An MM could possibly do it, but the feed speeds that you could work at might be very, very slow.

Also the polish wheels work by the cnc controller automatically reducing their diameter of the wheel by a fixed amount
per lin meter of work to compensate for wear and to ensure the polish wheel applies a good pressure.
Not sure if this is possible in mach, maybe someone else will know.

The frame & most parts would have to be water and slurrey resistant as it gets everywhere.
Vacuum Glass holding & origin blocks are required, although you could probably buy these.
You would also need some sort of positioning system to place the origin & holding blocks (laser pointer etc)

To sum up, it probably can be done, but whether it is economically viable is another question which i cannot answer.
If you have any other questions, fire away, i will do my best.

Cheers
Greeny

[JJ Glass]

Hi Greeny,

thanks for your reply. I will have to modify the MM, however, not as an edger although to be honest, I will give it a go, but mostly for cutouts. C.R.Laurence have a system where you can do cutouts and returns with a normal router http://crlaurence.com.au/crlapps/showline/offerpage.aspx?Productid=21168&GroupID=10609&History=39324:111:13798&ModelID=10609 so I would need it mostly for that. The beasts that you mentioned cost in the region of 250K, and as I am not a big company, I cant afford it.

What do you think??

Jo