Hold Downs for Glass Cutting

  1. On occasion when trying to maximize the use of the material area the nozzle tip has contacted the top of the hold down screws.
  2. Also using the screws on 3mm glass there is possibility to tighten too hard on the glass and cracking it or imparting stress in the glass sheet that can lead to cracks.

To alleviate this we turned some delrin disks with a step and lip so the edge of the step contacts the edge of the glass and the lip is what goes over the top of the glass edge. The step is 3mm so as you tighten the screw it cant press any harder on the glass and the hole for the screw is large enough to allow adjustment. The thickness of the part that rests over top of the glass is less that the nozzle height when cutting so even if the nozzle tip passed over the delrin button it wont contact.

These were made on a lathe but they could easily be 3-d printed

hold down1
hold down2


5 Likes

Like your set-up. We need to 3d print some of those.

What are the dimensions? I could draw them up and post the STL for others to 3D print. Really clever idea.

Chris

Thx for those kind remarks!

Well I made mine on a lathe so had one 1” round stock which is why that’s my OD. The total thickness is 4.75mm. The small diameter is 5/8” and thickness is 3 mm to match the glass thickness. The lip is 1.75 mm which is a bit thicker than the nozzle height setting tool which assured me the torch would clear if it passed overtop. The hole is 5/16” (don’t you love the mixing of metric and imperial units ). :thinking:

I think if I was going to 3D print I’d make the hole a bit smaller but slot it to improve the adjustment range.

3 Likes

As promised, albeit a bit late…

Interestingly, OnShape gladly accepts a mix of imperial, fractions, and metric measurements-all in the same drawing!

Enjoy.

Chris

2 Likes

Thank you for taking the time.

1 Like

thx Chris. I don’t have a 3d printer but i’m sure others will appreciate this.

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Great idea, I’ve only been cutting a few weeks but also had that issue with the nozzle catching the screw-head - we can’t afford to have too much of. border around our expensive art glass, can we? UK user of Bullseye, shocking prices!

Apologies for being a bit dim here, is this shareable code to get these 3D printed?

I know nothing of 3D printers but I know a couple of people who could print this button for me if this is what this is, and I have seen in the past, sites that you can download the whatever it’s called to print designs.

I work with glass also, so this would be incredibly useful

Thanks

Yes the file that Chris provided with the extension .step should be easily imported to a 3D printer. Some printers require file with and extension .stl but folks that do 3D printing should know how to convert. I’d just download The file Chris provided and send it to your contacts that can 3D print it for you.

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Brilliant thank you, will get someone to make me some, excellent idea, thanks for sharing.

I have already had one sheet crack and I initially thought it was my placement of shapes, or that I’d got a stress-y piece of glass, but it happened today as well, and I hadn’t thought about the screws causing it

Thank you

We’ve had a number of sheets crack initially when we were using the default automatic tab feature which usually only places one tab. It seemed like the tab would fail on one nested piece and that would initiate a crack that would propagate across the sheet. We started using 2 tabs and it has helped alleviate the sheet cracking problem. We still use a dingle tab for small items but anything over an inch we use two.