How to Cut Glass - With (nichrome) Wire

to show the technique: lets just chop off a bottle. a piece of nichrome-wire and some current will do. its easy. fast. cheap (all materials used here are pulled from the trash. as always: go dumpster-diving)

__note: *nichrome*,

& what the hell is that? well, thats the heaven you can gut out of an old hair-blower or toaster etc.

to be guillotined: a glass-bottle from the trash.

__btw 1, this works not just on round objects

__btw 2, the following cut is done without any scoring of the glass (see a future-post on that)

as my master back in germany used to teach us:" keep it simple, stupid!"

the trick, if any, is to get a tight fit around the object you want to cut: without shorting the circuit later.

so here i opt for a little piece of (ply)wood from a fruit-crate; quickly customized as follows:

_1 make a (square or rectancular) small hole - (i just use a screw-driver and punch it through the wood).. through this hole the two ends of the wire-loop will come out , very close to each other b u t not touching

_2 to create some kind of lock of the wire-ends i just make two cuts on each side of the center-hole (see picture - i used any small saw that was flying about up here in the cabin)... the ends of the loop coming out of the hole will just be snaked through the slits (this, friction, helps tighten the loop around the body to be cut, as well as prevents loosening - just think of it as a simple ´belt´)

the electrical part is even easier:

i use a transformer (220v > 12v, 4amps) from a trashed bathroom-vanity. and i was about to control it with an old dimmer (but that critter didnt feel like showing up for work today). so i cheat a bit and replace it ih some gadget i banged together the other day (some ac-regulator coupled with a voltmeter - see pix).

anyhow: the idea is to connect the transformer on the down-side to the nichrome-wire loop (see pix - using some simple croco-clips.. wires not shown). the upside i run through the controller (or any old dimmer etc will do), simply to have some margin on the resulting heat of the wire.

hook it all up and connect it to some powersource (here 220v outlet from solar-kit).

moment of truth 1: i applied about 180v for about 20 seconds

then, right away, get ready for some:

your wiring quickly unplugged or switched off from the main-source:

comes the moment of truth #2: just dip the bottle with (again, d e a d ! ) wires in some receptacle containing cold water you have prepared sitting on the side.

the bottle will snap (thermo-stress) along the wire-trace (not even having been scored)

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..... done

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thank you all.

any positive and negative feedback welcome, questions even more so.

work less and play more, over&out.

un abrazu de los picos de europa.

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