Glass Work

Basic skills related to glass are making a cut and heating the glass or melting it. In the lab, we cut a glass for the purpose of producing a glass rod or heating glass tubing to make a dropper or to bend a glass tube into shape.

There are 2 types of glass: soda lime glass - made up of a mixture of sodium carbonate, calcium carbonate and silicon dioxide. - used in producing glass tubing - colorless borosilicate glass - made of silica and boric oxide, with small amounts of alkalis (sodium and potassium oxides) and aluminium oxides. - used to produce heat resisting ware (Pyrex)

Glass Cutting
There are 2 main steps to be followed: 1) Drawing the score line using an appropriate glass cutter. The requirements for good scoring are: A good cutter

A firm, flat, clean support for the glass Clean glass Not tilting the wheel to left or right Uniform application of force and speed

 Always do the hardest cut first A score clean of glass chips and barely visible when looking at the surface of the glass

2) Breaking out Method 1: Bend the glass, pushing up from the side of the glass opposite the score line while giving some lateral pull. Position your hands by curling your fingers toward yourself on the bottom side of the glass and pointing your thumbs away from yourself on the top surface of the glass.

Method 2: Align a straight score on large sheets just inside the table edge, lift and firmly snap the glass down.

3) After separating the glass it s good to wipe off the bottom edge of the glass piece being saved in order to remove the sharp edge generally left on the bottom side of the glass. 4) Polish the glass edge with glass grinder or a file.