Glass and some plastics are shaped in the University shop with a wet diamond wheel, a cheap tiny table top belt sander with a glassblowing belt, oven slumping, and if need be, pitch lapping like you would make an amateur telescope with.
It does not take much to make a diamond disk glass saw, basically go to a machine tool supply place and get a half inch slit saw arbor and some bearing blocks, plus a small slow motor and a source of dripping water on the blade. Diamond blades of decent size are about nine dollars each.
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The 75$ one inch wide belt sander from Harbor freight is not bad, and the glass sanding belts come from Wale Apparatus.
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One of my friends uses the Ebay glass cutting diamond bandsaw and swears by it..
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/glass-band-saw
There is a 199$ small one out there some place.
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The astronomy glass polishing supplies are all over the web.
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Classical iron wheel lapidary machines probably show up cheap once their buyers, who dream of cutting/polishing/faceting gem stones, find out how hard it is to make precise pretty rocks at home from anything but glass and quartz.
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There are evap services for telescope makers who will put enhanced aluminum down on your glass, but have one whole run ready, and help them figure out how to mount it on the planetary in their coating chamber.. Glass only not plastic, in those chambers.
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Lapidary and Bead Making suppliers should have you covered on doing this cheap.
Steve
Last edited by mixedgas; 09-23-2017 at 04:37.
Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
I should have rented the space under my name for advertising.
When I still could have...