ot milling glass

[pete mcadams]

A friend has asked me to try milling a border in some glass cabnet doors. simple contor ball with a ball end mill. anyone done it?

thanks

pete

[les]

yup

max your rpms, 2 flutes, climb cut,

use a peice of plywood under door to keep oil and other stuff off the door. do a test run first.

 

best of luck

[Eric S.]

I am very happy to reply no to your question!

 

But I am interested to hear about this one.

 

Maybe a diamond grinding bit in the cnc might work? Just a guess.

 

 

Eric

[Harryman]

I have tried drilling quartz with a small end mill but got only a very short life.

 

Diamond grinding tools work very well.

 

Have fun!

[Roger Peterson]

You must have been speaking with the Yasda salesman...

 

 

j/k

[SledGeek]

Is it just me or does anyone elses neck hair stand up at the thought of this....like nails on a chalkboard !

[EZ3PUTT]

Sandblast ?

[Harryman]

Check this out.

 

http://starliteindustries.com/c100/c100p07a.htm

 

We buy 1/8" core drills from these guys. I run them in an air spindle at 26K and mill quartz with success.

 

Got the killer glass machining job going right now. 534 holes through .035" quartz inside a .3" radius. All are positioned uniquely in 5 axis directly from mathematical data. No CAD. No CAM. Pure macros. The part is for an oxygen plasma molecular beam source.

 

Have a super weekend!

[jspangler]

Hi

Hey can you please post some details or links where I can find more info on the air spindle you mentioned.

 

Thanks

 

John

[Karl Oram]

This method depends on how big the piece of Glass is but I can GUARENTY it will work. What you do is get two pieces of Green plate glass that are larger than the piece your going to cut. You warm up slowly on a hot plate until all three pieces of the glass until you can melt candle wax on them, Then using candle wax melted on all the glass you sandwich the Good piece between the two scrap pieces. You then warm up a Flat piece of plate that is smaller than the finished sizes that you can clamp to later or hold in a vice. Place a tree pieces onto the plate again using the melted candle wax. If you can get a resin mix to mix with your candle wax you can use this to make the wax a harder wax this makes it so that the wax that has a higher melting point but will hold larger jobs much more.

Place the glass equally-spaced on the plate and leave to cool completely. NO SHORT CUTS. You should cover the glass with a box and tissue to keep away any drafts and keep doors closed while setting this up to prevent the heated glass from flawing. Also make sure you only warm the glass as little as possible just enough that the wax freely melts over it.

 

Once its all cooled off use a DIAMOND Grit Tool about a 40 grade to do a rough pass and you could use a 20 Grit for a nice finish. And you can profile this part you need. Make sure the part is always flood to prevent again Stress flaws. Keep you Feed Slow and Your RPMS as high as you can get.

 

The two waste glass pieces will protect the good piece while machining. Once machined slowly warm the plate up again and take them apart.

 

 

Hope this Helps

Karl Oram

www.caledonian.ca

[Harryman]

We use a NSK Bantam 250 air spindle 1/8" collet.

[pete mcadams]

thanks for the help. looks like it works i bolted the glass on an aluminum plate 8000 rpm 10 ipm .040 deep 0.5 ballmill if i go deeper or faster it cracks.

pete

 

[ 11-18-2003, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: pete mcadams ]

[Jack Mitchell]

Wow Karl, that was seriously cool.

 

Still learning stuff after all these years.

 

Regards, Jack

 

[ 11-18-2003, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: Jack Mitchell ]

[the1yyz]

Westwind make a good Air spindle.

IBAG make a good electric.

 

We run our air spindles for Titanium at 65000 rpms

 

We have also developed Adapter heads for the Fadal and Haas machines to hold six spindles.

So we can run multiples of smaller parts.

 

[CAM-mando]

Whew .... interesting.

 

*/puts on safetey hat/ I would think dust collection a must here.

 

BTW

Anybody ever weld C4 ?

 

[ 11-18-2003, 12:24 PM: Message edited by: CAMmando ]