Laser cut glass?

[Keith Colson]

This maybe a stupid question but can I use my laser cutter to put score marks in glass and then snap the line? Are there any other techniques you can use like this? Any info would be appreciated, I like the get the most features out of my machine.

Cheers
Keith

[Dave Sheldrake]

Not as such Keith, you can do the follow the leader kind of cutting (it causes the grass to fracture just behind the beam) but using it for scoring doesn't cause enough deep penetration / stress usually.

cheers

Dave

[Joe Pelonio]

I tried that the first day I got my laser since I do stained glass. Dave is right, the etch is not a score, and if you attempt to use the etch line to score it will dull your cutting wheel. What I have done on some tricky glass shapes is to apply transfer tape, and kiss cut through it with the laser, then remove one piece at a time and cut/grind along the edge of the tape. Much easier to see than a paint pen.

[Kev Williams]

since I like to experiment-- I have a bunch of cheap mirror tiles I keep around for practice. I just vectored a diagonal line on the top side (100 power 20 speed) 2" from the bottom right corner. When I snapped it, the middle 2/3 appeared to follow the line, but the about 1/2" on each end didn't, shorting on the snapped piece. But after a second look at the back, the cut isn't straight at all, it's radiused from end to end.
I tried a second snap on the left corner, which was also fruitless!
glasscut.jpg

[Rangarajan Saravana kumar]

Recently Rofin sinar has developed laser cutting glass

Search youtube cutting glass thru laser...

regards

[Keith Colson]

Thanks Rangarajan

I checked out their website and their laser appears to cut other brittle items like ceramics too. It might even cut ferrite. I wonder how the process works? The thermal expansion and shock normally makes brittle items crack.

Cheers
Keith

[Michael Hunter]

From my own experience (accidentally vectoring glass at high power and low speed) I think that it could be made to work successfully with a standard CO2 laser.

Unless you have a kiln to anneal the glass after lasering and separating the pieces, it could be a bit dangerous though : the stresses from the laser heat could cause the glass to fracture unexpectedly at a later date.

[Jeff Belany]

I have cut glass a few times with fair success. Leaves a bit of a ragged edge but if your're putting it in a frame I won't show. IIRC i started the line before the edge and ran it past the edge at the end. If you had a set up to grind the rough edge it would work fairly well.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin

[Bill Cunningham]

Like Jeff, I have scored glass, but only in a straight line. I ran some masking tape along the cut line, and vector cut at 10% speed & full power. I then just snapped the glass apart. The only dif. In the result was the back of the cut was a bit ragged, so it edged it against my benchtop belt sander and it smoothed out fine. I doubt if you could cut any shapes though.

[Bob WrightNC]

Great Stuff. Thread printed and into my Laser notebook. Thanks!

[Matt Turner (physics)]

The Rofin process doesn't use a CO2 laser (they don't say what kind of laser it is, except that it fires ultrashort pulses). By using shorter pulses with higher peak power, you reduce the thermal shock on the material because you vaporize the material in the cut before the heat has a chance to spread. We've used this same principle to cut glass and silicon wafers on our laser—dropping our pulse rate to 500Hz (which increases the energy and peak power per pulse) lets us cut these materials without shattering. The edge quality depends on the specific material.

It doesn't seem to work on glass, but there are some some ceramics you can cut without shattering by doing multiple passes, i.e. effectively engraving through the material. I was just thinking this morning about trying this with ferrite.

[Rich Harman]

I have cut the glass that comes in picture frames with limited success. Only tried once, it worked but the edge was rough and the last half inch didn't break where I wanted it to. I think it cracked during the lasering process since I used high power and low speed.

[Melissa BurnerMN]

So... Guy wants me to try and cut/score some mirror for him. So I should put some masking tape on it first, do up a straight line engraving, and send it? He's having issues with his diamond wheel.

[John Lifer]

From past and my observations with my wife's stained glass works, it is setting up for failure. You aren't scoring like with wheel, you are fracturing with laser. Lot of difference.
I'd pass.

[Kev Williams]

FWIW- for fun I just tried scoring my piece of test mirror with a 'diamond drag' tool. Funny, each test did pretty much the same thing: 1/2 broke on the line perfectly, the other 1/2 didn't... to be fair, maybe if I was using something a bit more high-tech than some small channellocks to snap with ...