Anyone know a least expensive way of cutting thin sheet glass?

high speed abrasive jet in air, small diameter.

http://process-equipment.globalspec.com/LearnMore/Manufacturing_Process_Equipment/Machine_Tools/Abrasive_Jet_Machining_Equipment

This is really quite tricky!

What dimensions are we talking about for the length and width?

What size production run are we considering?

Is this normal glass or something a bit special as it is very thin?

Have you considered moulding to size and shape? This has the advantage of allowing for stress relieving in the tempering/cooling process.

This is a chemically toughen lime glass and the slot to be cut is 3mm width by 8.0mm length with a radius at both end.

Not possible to use abrasive jet cutting machine as pressurized water would break the thin glass(0.5mm or 0.20") to pieces.

pressurized air. You can slice up light bulbs with this.

How many needed, and what is the cost point, why glass?

depending on the stress, you may have to chemically harden it after utting to szie and stresed glass can go into particles if stress is allowed to propagate.

Don't count the pieces.

Hardened glass is very trick stuff as it is already stressed. If you cut it you will unleash those stresses unless you do some annealing and tempering to stress relieve. This still leaves the option of moulding the whole thing complete with hole in its correct location. This could well be viable if the numbers required are suitable.

You would able to find glass on the display panel in some laptop, Plasma TV or on Motorola Razor mobile phone.

Thank for the contributiion !

Metal foil is also very dificult to cut without damage. One technique is to stack up several layers, possibly with another material alternating between glass layers, like a polymer film (mylar or high temp. Kapton tape ) to provide cushion, reduce slippage, etc. The stack should then be placed into a fixture that has strong firm support to prevent flexing. A sacrificial top board of a light wood or polymer could be used to apply a light even pressure to maintain the integrity of the stack and as a template for the slot.

To cut the slot, try using an abrasive bit on a high speed cutter like a Dremel Tool or one of its clones. After every run, record the number of "good" unbroken pieces out of the total in the stack. Try changing bits, run at different speeds if possible, vary the amount of clamping pressure, number in the stack, etc. to come up with an optimum process that yields the highest percentage of good parts.

Face it, with materials like this you are going to have some scrap. The idea is what to do to minimize it.

For higher tech solutions try the same thing with a Laser or water jet instead of the Dremel Tool.

"Least expensive" is the holdup, I would guess....because even the least expensive--assuming hypothetically that such a thing could ever be known--is almost sure NOT to be inexpensive; you also did not indicate your intended production volume! I would include IC manufacturers in my process investigation: since IC lithography and cutting of wafers (and the machinery used in the process) might have relevance to your question. For example, a possible solution might lie in some kind of etching process whereby the cut lines (under program control) would be the un-etched lines that have not been masked on a sheet of glass. After etching (with acid or some lithographic process) the pane might be stressed, vibrated, stamped, etc. to cause it to fracture along the weakened (read: less thick etched) lines. As with IC fabrication, human intervention in the process (and additional equipments/instruments) might be required at the fracturing/inspection/screening/rejection phase of production. Hope this is useful. Hope you notion of least expensive is not also inexpensive.

It's guest #9 again. Generally I hesitate to critique a question because, too often, the questioner will respond in anger (and attempt to muster online alliances) against the attempted help when the question is "exposed" as being overbroad or not-well-thought-out. But, since the responses seem limited to your question, please allow a few pointers. First, it seems, you have (paradoxically) limited or tied the hands of responders by seemingly constrained the scope of your question--but, in fact, leaving it open-ended and, therefore, not conducive to any but "endless" possible responses. First, the question asks for "cheapest" expense but also implies capital costs by the mention of machinery to do the task(s). Unless someone had already done what you essay to do with glass--but how would they even know if they had--no one would be in any position to know, at the concept level, what the answer might be. They would not know what the process outcome is; they would not know what cost elements constitute "expense." They would be lacking in most of what they need to contemplate what might be and effective concept, leave aside how much it might cost to design, build, implement:

1. What size glass pieces would be produced?

2. What are the glass stock pane's physical constituents?

3. What is the glasses crystalline or amorphous or composite form?

4. How many glass pieces will be produced and at what rate?

5. Where are "expense" savings hoping, or needing, to be realized? Capital equipment investment? Labor? Acquisition? other?

6. What are the shapes required? Rectilinear? Curved? Both? What are the smallest pieces needed? The largest?

7. What is the end product...as specifically as it can be described? (Maybe your question has already been solved?)

8. And so forth.

Consider, please, the following possible template for a question that might yield better, if not simply more, good responses:

"I am seeking affordable, least cost concepts for manual or machine processes for the cutting of intricate shapes, in mass quantities of _________ per __________, out of 0.5-mm thickness sheets of ____________________ glass. I also seek to keep shatter waste to a minimum or eliminate it entirely." In my area the cost of [capital funding/labor/other] is at a premium."

Hope this is helpful. Hope to have another concept or two for you a bit later.

Hi Guest #9,

Here are my answer:

1. Various sizes depending on projects.

2. Composed of silica (71-75%), soda (12-16%) and lime (10-15%)

3. As above.

4. That will depend on the profile and shapes that are being cut.

4. Looking for least expensive machinery that could cut the glass. For example I would classify laser as the most expensive machine to acquire with a high processing cost and next would be water/air abrasive cutting machine and so on.

5. I looking for capital equipment investment and as well as cost of processing using the machinery to cut the glass.

6. All sort of shapes could be produced including spline, curved and etc.

7. Most of the glass panels are now currently being used on some laptop displayed screen or on the viewing screen plasma TV.

Cutting the external profile is always the easiest part as I could simply use a relatively cheap scribing machine. The hardest part is finding a good and inexpensive machinery with relatively low processing cost to cut eg. a small elongated hole or slot inside the glass without breaking the glass to million pieces.

Is there any valid reason for you to do this in house? There are companies who do this for a living, who have all the machines and they keep them busy all the time.

Most of these people are in Taiwan and China. I suggest you use this resource.

http://www.asia.manufacturers.globalsources.com/

look for the people who deal in this stuff and ask. It makes no sense to gear up for small scale production. Most of them will even make you small prototype runs. They have a prototype dept and they will hand cut the first few(labor = cheap there)

CO2 lasers can be effective, and are getting cheap. The nice thing about them is that they don't have a lot of mass. I, personally, have never seen one in use, but have read several articles about them. This seems like an ideal place to use them.

chris

I myself have used a CO2 laser engraver/cutter before. If the power level is high enough, you should be able to get very intricate shapes in glass rather quickly. I am sure there are lots of places around that could do your part for you.