Another rabbit hole. Stained glass

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

I just met one of my wife’s fabraholics who does stained glass.
Has anyone been down this avenue.
How to score and whatever the basic rules are.
Just what I need…

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

The big considerations are:

• probably an M.C. Etcher can’t score deeply enough for a reliable snap — some folks have reported success under specific circumstances — a further caution is that the tool should not go past the edge which may damage the artificial diamond
• if milled, likely best to do so in a water bath — note that the glass shards must be disposed safely and absolutely not poured down a drain (they will shred the filters of you local community water system)

See:

Stained glass hearts in a wood frame

My wife wanted to know if the Shapeoko could cut glass, which was all the encouragement I needed to potentially make a huge mess. I am happy to say that with a bit of prep work a Shapeoko 3 has no problem cutting glass. The first step was making a water bath to lubricate/cool the cutter while milling the glass (and also capture the glass dust). I made a quick design in OpenSCAD for the good sized bath (10" x 7") I could fit on our 3D printer, and 38 hours printing was done. It leaked (very s…

What did you cut on your Shapeoko/ Nomad today?

Thanks so much. It’s all done with a drag bit in my Nomad, a jewelry box for a niece. All art created by me, in Affinity Designer, with the help of some photos. The solid color areas are parallel lines 0.15 mm apart. The mountain in the background is the East Face of Mt. Whitney with Keeler and Day Needles on the left. (I scaled that East Face when I was much younger.) The dragonfly I also used for a stained glass window, the wing venation is the same. Here’s the tool paths in CC, the currently…

Scoring Glass With The MC Etcher

Has anyone used the MC Etcher to score thin glass? The glass would be 1/8” or less for picture frames in various shapes.

MC Etcher to cut glass

Could you use MC Etcher to score glass so that it can then be broken along the score lines - as in stained glass?

(there might be one or two more which could be found with a search)

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

This forums resource is awesome. Thanks to @WillAdams 's encyclopedic libraries services this thread looked pretty good.

Stained glass hearts in a wood frame

My wife wanted to know if the Shapeoko could cut glass, which was all the encouragement I needed to potentially make a huge mess. I am happy to say that with a bit of prep work a Shapeoko 3 has no problem cutting glass. The first step was making a water bath to lubricate/cool the cutter while milling the glass (and also capture the glass dust). I made a quick design in OpenSCAD for the good sized bath (10" x 7") I could fit on our 3D printer, and 38 hours printing was done. It leaked (very s…

And a glass cutter @DrPete seemed to validate the process with additional great insights.

Thanks everyone !

[robgrz (Rob Grzesek (Carbide 3D))]

My dad was into that when I was young, so I got to play with the scrap glass.

The core tools were just a rolling glass cutter, pliers to snap the glass, a knife for the lead in between the pieces of glass, and a big soldering iron. ( agree that McEtcher would not work)

At one point, he got a thing that looked like a little router table with a diamond wheel and a water pump that could reshape the edges slightly. He’d been doing it for a while at that point, though.

[HeuristicBishop (Tyler Sowers)]

Those little glass carving tables are awesome. I’m pretty sure you could also shape smaller stones with them as well. Might be a fun way to add some unique accents to a piece…little polished stone hardware for jewelry boxes maybe
(I bet you could just chuck up some granite working bits in a drill press and rig up some water. The grinding is relatively low force and the speeds don’t need to be crazy )

---

Hearing from friends that do stained glass work, the big thing to be careful of is the fumes. Solder fumes are no good and (in electronics at least) folks tend think lead free solder solves all their problems, but flux fumes can so serious damage as well and they’re not mentioned nearly as often for some reason.

Definitely looking forward to seeing what you do with this

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

I have always loved stain glass work. My aunt did this for years and paid a price.
I have solder dipped wires as a prep for usage. I learned pretty quick that the flux and solder are not what I want to do any real volume of.

So do to a casual conversation with a lady at a restaurant to night, it all comes back to mind.

What am I going to do with this, aaahhhh … IDK, but it’s re peculating

[MadHatter]

With a CNC router, a nice downdraft table could be made to remove the fumes before they get to you. Then you can either filter the air or duct it outside.

If only we knew someone with a CNC router.

What about modifying a glass scoring tool to be used like a drag knife? Yes, I imagine there would be some lathe work to get it to work properly, but maybe someone with more time and less ADHD could do more than design it.

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

I was thinking to use acrylic as the frame for the glass.
Not sure of expansion issues between glass and acrylic or attachment methods ( silicone ).
Probably use an acrylic thickness similar to the glass unless some consideration comes up.

It would make it something I could handle.
I will not sit and solder something together, it’s not me.

As you can see from my posts, I drift around for projects. Love it.