tl;dr - Is there stained glass equipment or can you use your own in the common spaces?
More info: My mom is coming for an extended trip in December - February of this year. She LOVES stained glass and has a studio in her house. I’ve talked up the different areas of the makers space, but she (oddly) doesn’t want to pick up all the new hobbies. It seems like there was some people who were interested in stained glass in the past, so I’m curious if that’s done inside or outside of Asmbly.
I believe the stained glass classes have been taught in the electronics space, perhaps for the availability of soldering irons. We don’t, as far as I know, have any equipment in the shop. But you can bring your own and use it there. A work table in the woodshop would be fine, or probably in the multi-purpose room. I’d stay out of lasers and textiles. Make sure to clean up any glass dust/shards wherever you are, and sweep the floor around and wipe down tables for dust/chemicals. @Rolo could advise as well.
there is the potential to cut stained glass with a co2 laser. I tried with mixed results.
it’s a matter of doing light scoring passes like 20x-50x over. the cycle time needs to be long enough for the heat from the prior pass to dissipate, so small test shapes may need manually added pass delays where larger jobs may not, like if it already takes more than 30s on a pass before returning to repeat on the same start point. we don’t want to let it get hot enough to crack yet.
then follow with one slow thermal pass that starts with a small power-on startup delay to get the heat started.
ideally the thermal pass starts a crack that follows the existing score line. I wasn’t always successful at having it follow curves, the tighter the radius the higher the risk of leaving the score line.
you might wonder why you wouldn’t just keep doing scoring passes until it eventually gets through. what happens is glass, unlike plywood or acrylic, does not turn to gas under the laser. most of the debris from a score pass fuses back into the cut, and further scoring passes largely just hit the fused debris already there. this appears that the increase in score depth has diminishing returns on higher numbers of passes and a hard limit on how deep the score can go before it’s just spending all its energy hitting the debris on top and not getting any deeper.
the exact method that might work would vary with the glass being used. not just thickness but the composition of glass can change.
if it works, it could be a significant time saver. it’s particularly useful if you can get it to crack down a concave feature which are notoriously more difficult to manually snap. it could enable more complex designs.
if it can’t be made to consistently crack down the score line, it may still be useful to score on the laser and snap manually.
either way, the edge will still need to be polished on a diamond drum wet grinder. the edges i got were both sharp and gritty from the fused score material
this might work better if the glass is sitting in a shallow tray filled with water. this would help localize the thermal expansion to just the area near the beam’s focal point and may help the crack propagate diwn a tightly curved score line. probably spacers under the glass so water flows underneath it, and probably not deep enough for the water to flow over the glass- although I did once see a similar project flow for cutting alumina ( a ceramic) by having the material sit slightly below a water surface before hitting with a co2 laser. afaik water is completely opaque to co2 wavelength so that would work by blasting a steam void down to the stock. the air assist may be blasting it away too which might help or hurt this process.
There are a few Stained Glass kits in the electronics room with all the basic tools and some spendable supplies to include a small grinder. They’re stored in two big white buckets in the far right corner as you walk in the room. It also includes a Stained Glass soldering iron with a controller. If you need any additional tools, i may have them and she is welcome to use them. I also have a bigger grinder with different grits of diamond wheels. Maybe she can entretain an introduction to stained glass social/class?
We’re glad to accommodate you as much as we can with space and some tools
The electronics space sounds like a good place to start. If you end up working on larger projects, I would ask that you reserve time in the wood shop on skedda so you can use one of the work tables.
All in all please keep your space clean and properly dispose of any scraps or dust.
With glass, no matter how full your trash can is, please be the one to dispose of it afterwards in the dumpster to avoid someone else unknowingly handling glass type trash.
For a different potential option, I’ve done glasswork stuff at Blue Moon Glassworks, and I know that time in their space can be rented, plus there’s tools/consumables there. Unsure what their rates are though.
Wow, such amazing information! Thanks. She’s headed up for her orientation next week and is very excited!
The folks at Blue Moon are outlandishly nice and very knowledgeable. Super place!
+1 to Jose’s endorsement of Blue Moon
