How to make a ring glass cutter

The holes in the glass are cut with special tools: drills, countersinks, crowns, some of them with diamond spraying. Sometimes you need to drill one or more holes in the glass. In order not to make an expensive purchase, you can make the glass cutter yourself from ordinary materials, old parts and components. Moreover, both small holes and significant ones in diameter are drilled with homemade products.
Homemade products for cutting holes in glass differ in design and materials used. We will consider tools in which the main function is made of a copper node. The question may arise: why this material? The reason is simple: copper is soft and ductile, and particles of corundum or abrasive paste easily penetrate into it and, when rotated, remove the glass material where necessary.
Of course, the performance of such a homemade tool will be lower than that of a diamond crown. Experience shows that regardless of the size of the hole, it will take about 7 ± 0.5 minutes to cut it in glass with a thickness of 5 mm.
What do you need for work?

Tools and materials

This is a list of basic tools and materials for drilling glass:

• drilling machine or electric drill;
• copper strip;
• metal worm clamps;
• second-hand crown;
• abrasive in the form of alumina;
• paste for grinding in valves;
• plasticine.

Making a homemade glass cutter

There are plenty of options for glass drilling. Suitable, for example, the mandrel of a drum grinder, a wooden cylinder with a screw screwed into it, etc. We will consider two versions using a copper strip as the basis of a tool for cutting round holes in glass.
Version number 1. As a forming unit, we take a 30-mm ring crown and wrap it with a copper strip 50 × 300 × 0.15 mm in several layers and fix it in the middle with a worm hose clamp.
Before finally tightening the clamp, the copper winding must be moved down so that the teeth of the crown do not touch the glass during rotation during drilling and do not damage it.
You can slightly modify the previous version if you first remove the crown teeth on the emery wheel and wrap it with one layer of a copper sheet 1 mm thick.
Version number 2. In order not to mess with the copper strip, you can use the finished copper cylindrical product, for example, a cap with a diameter of 20 mm.
To fix the holder in the bottom, drill a hole in the center, insert the M6 ​​bolt of the required length from the inside and tighten the nut from the outside, placing an engraving washer under it.

The process of drilling holes in the glass

Working with glass requires accuracy and attention due to the combination of hardness and fragility. The tools created by us do not cut glass, but only activate the environment designed to remove its particles.
Abrasive particles in the form of alumina or paste for grinding in the valves are diluted with water, which simultaneously removes small debris and glass chips, and also cools it together with the tool.
In this regard, there is a difficulty associated with the retention of the abrasive composition diluted with water in the drilling zone. To do this, around it on the glass it is necessary to make an annular dam-fence made of plasticine.
What to use: aluminum oxide (cheap, but it works worse) or a compound for grinding in valves (expensive, but it cuts efficiently), everyone decides for himself, based on these and other circumstances.

Summary

Drilling glass with both tools went well. There were fears that the thin copper winding would not withstand the load and lose its integrity. Inspection of the homemade product after finishing work actually showed some crushing and deformation, but this did not prevent a positive result from being achieved.
Our tools are likely to be suitable for drilling and curly glass, if a way is found to hold the abrasive-cooling mixture in the drilling zone. Instead of water, to give the process more "softness", you can use kerosene or turpentine.
The use of a drilling machine is preferable to an electric drill, since there are problems with holding it in a strictly vertical position. Any deviation to the side will break the glass.


Original article in English