Nice to see a video with no endless chatting before they get to the point and no music. Just what I needed. Also no cheeky grins with an invitation to like the video and not forgetting to "hit the subscribe button".
Instead of a fancy drill bit I used an aluminum pipe turning in a pool of valve grinding paste. The drill was held in a drill press using only the weight of the drill to apply a constant pressure.
Drill presses are great for this. Go as slow as you can, especially at the end, and put very little pressure on the glass. To smooth the edge, a kiln works great but most people don't have access to one. An alternative is to use diamond, carborundum, or alundum stones or files. They come in various grits. This needs to be done wet and can take awhile but will result in a nice, smooth edge.
As long as you keep the bit cool (wet) you should be able to do pretty thick glass. I've never tried drilling a curved surface but it should work if you are careful. On a curved surface, the bit is going to exit the glass unevenly and you would want to really slow down right before the bit came out the other side and try to apply even pressure to prevent chipping on the back side. Some tape on the back side might help with that too. I'd love to hear how it works on curved glass.
Another very important aspect of using water is to retain the glass powder which results from the grinding - breathing glass powder is not a good thing.
Make sure you know whether the glass in the tank you are going to drill is "tempered" glass or not. If you try drilling tempered glass it can easily shatter. Tempered glass is heated and cooled in a certain way. The internal structure is under different stress than the outside making it very strong. Once you start cutting/drilling, the glass can easily shatter because you are changing that pressure difference. Tempered glass CAN be drilled but it can be difficult to do.
So if I bought a glass desk likely it's tempered for strength and if I want to add holes for other items on the desktop either don't do it of be very careful?
The water reduces friction and absorbs heat to keep the bit and glass cool. You are likely to crack the glass and wear down the bit quickly if you don't use water or oil.
Im a Glazier, look it up, 2 things, speed of the drill should be constant while rotating the drill to actually enlarge the hole from the drill size, this will prevent breakage, and dont use water, use a cooling fluid diluted into water, ie. "cutting fluid" or Atf works in a pinch. also , please post the vid of you breaking tempered glass when you were not expecting it. thanks
That's right. With a drill press you cut straight down from the start and it works quite well. If you don't have a drill press, you can do it this way where you start at an angle to prevent the bit from jumping around in the beginning.
For those who want to know, you should use a diamond core drill bit. They can drill through glass, ceramic, and tile. I got mine from Diamon-Drill-Bit-and-Tool but I've begun to see them at some hardware stores.
Those drills with the automatic breaks and fast starts I think make it much harder, I use a corded DeWalt and the slow start up, and gradual stop makes it much easier and smoother for me. Having a sudden stop/start increases the chipout in my experience, but taping the glass dose help a little bit.
Correct me if I am wrong but fish tanks like this one are made of plexiglass which is a type of plastic. So for a fish tank you could simply use any drill bit that you wanted to drill this hole. Not to mention When drilling wholes in glass you will not use a hollow bit like the one in this video. Instead you will use diamond core bits.
Excellent points. You definitely want to go slowly especially the first time you try it. I should admit that that the finished hole on this tank wasn't completely smooth. I probably rushed it a bit but I didn't need a perfectly smooth hole for what I was doing with the tank.
Play Doh would probably work. It just needs to create a (mostly) water tight seal to keep water around the drill bit. A stream of water directed at the bit would work too.
tape the back of the glass as seen in almost every other 'drill hole in aquarium' vid, and make sure glass is not tempered (usually only the bottom), but checking takes 5 seconds tops with polarized glasses...
9 лет назад
the glass dust is now in the towel. watch out whoever next washes thier face in that bathroom
I would recommend drilling from the inside of the tank out because of you get chip out you would want it on the outside of the tank not inside especially if you are fitting with a bulkhead. Use a template to start your holes to prevent the walking of the bit as well.
just something i'd like to point out. I've drilled many tanks for bulkheads. For someone doing this for the first time i would not recommend going as fast as you were. Sure everything worked out and no crack but I would go a bit slower and pull the bit off the glass more often and flushing the the area. The key is let the weight of the drill do the work. DO NOT push on the drill at all and as mentioned when you are breaking through go slower, going fast at the end and snagging will = CRACK
Zamiast H2O lepiej stosować terpentynę. Można wiercić trójkątnym wiertłem z węglika tytanu TiN lub karborundem(SiC) w postaci proszku ściernego SiC w terpentynie, a wiertłem jest rurka mosiężna lub miedziana (uzbraja się ona ziarnami ścierniwa).
I've never tried it on rounded glass like a bottle. I imagine that it could work but would be a little tricky. You would want to be sure you went really slowly to prevent cracking and chipping.
As long as it is ordinary, laminated, annealed glass you should be OK. If it has been tempered or hardened then you'll likely shatter the glass with this method.
Considering the price, it's actually a pretty decent drill for basic household tasks. It's not the fastest nor the most powerful drill but it's better than some knockoff drill.
Nice video - thanks for posting. I'll be tackling my tank this weekend. Good point to make: never *ever* attempt to drill tempered glass. It *will* shatter. That would be no bueno.
just use a wet piece of polystyreen, it will suck to the glass kinda. Make a hole in it with the glass drill and use that as a guide. This way you can place it more precise
use less water and dont replace it use glass dust as coumpond it saves your holesaw...and use a jig instead of tilting....and at last I always use a rest under the glass...
Admittedly, that wasn't the best hole I've ever drilled but there weren't any scratches on the glass and the edges of the hole weren't very jagged. The purpose of the hole is to accept a bulk head which covers up minor imperfections anyway.
I've never tried it on a mirror but I don't see why it won't work. You'll want to be careful not to scratch or damage the silver coating of the mirror.
You need to go slow. For example a 1/2" drill bit should be run at 800 RPM, a 1" bit at 500 RPM, and even slower for larger bits. Therefore, you'll need a variable speed drill to go that slowly. The drill in the video is fairly slow (1300 RPM on high, 400 RPM on low) which is actually nice for drilling glass. I find that some cheap corded drills can be hard to keep at low RPM.
Great stuff! I'm interested to know what do you now do with the hole? Do you have a video that shows that? I want to know how to turn this hole into a reliable piping door. Thanks
Was that glass heat treated? Normally heat treated glass on larger tanks have a sticker that say "Heat treated do not drill" Was that tank the same? I have always wanted to make holes in my tank that has heat treated glass.
Thanks for the tutorial. Just a question, if you wanted a really nice finish on the edge of the hole how would you polish the glass?(i´m guessing for a really uniform hole a drill press at low speed would leave a nice edge but after that what could do to further polish)
Thanks for sharing an elegant video. Now I have to figure out where to buy a diamond hole-saw bit. I need to drill a hole for a bulk head fitting into a 125 gallon tank. Thanks.
I have been experimenting with this and the hole goes fine until I'm about to cut through and, despite slowing down, as it goes through it either breaks the glass or pops a scallop of glass out from around the edge of the hole on the other side. How do you stop it popping the scallop out from the back?
Hey mate the way I do it at work and the way I was taught during my apprenticeship was to drill half way and flip the glass over and drill the remainder from the other side... The way I keep the hole accurate was to drill the same size hole in a piece perspex and use that as a template
Jacko Davies This is probably the best way. You could also try putting a piece of packing tape on the bottom of the glass but flipping the piece is probably better.
+Simon Voorwinde try clamping a piece of medium density material like cement board or mdf board on the underside of the glass and drill through the glass + the false board underneath so that you'd get a clean cut on the glass end.
w000mbat is right............kerosene works better at dissipating the friction heat. I believe, if I remember my Chem 101, it relates to kerosene's "heat of fusion" relative to that of water
Not when he drops the cut out piece onto the top of the tank... ^-^ I love that People try to discredit something cause "THEY CAN'T DO IT"..weak humans..
It's real glass. It's a 10 gallon All-Glass aquarium. You can see the silicone holding the panels together. Plexiglass tanks don't use silicone because silicone doesn't bond to plastic very well at all. Dean Green is right, the cut piece makes a very "glassy" sound when I dropped it on the top at the end. The acoustics in the room weren't great but if you've ever drilled glass and Plexi it's pretty obvious that this is glass, at least to my ear.
Makify1 agreed but as long as you are plugged into a GFCI and the drill is in good working order you will be fine. oh and if you tried to fill up the bath tub and drill under water the resulting shock is gods way of saying you should not reproduce.
1. Corded drills are always ready to go. 2. Do not require proprietary battery packs that die with time. 3. Generally have more power, due to having access to mains voltage. 4. Are generally made better (at least all my pre throw-away society drills are)
Gary the drill is cordless, maybe rather then using your 30 years of negative eyes wide shut experience you should just spend a little more time to actually see what is in front of you.... just putting it out there
