The holes’ drilling is not a new technology. Before this, Gelivable was very proud of this several holes glass cover.

The difficulty of this glass is that the CNC hole grinding technology must be grasped well. It may happen that when you grind to the last hole with defects, the whole piece of glass will be scrapped.

However, these are just small holes, and glass thicknesses are below 3.0mm. Every time customers need to drill a large hole,Gelivable always refused. In fact, it has been tested for many times. It takes a long time for processing and the yield rate is almost zero. So we have to refuse.

However,continuous breakthroughs are always required under industry competition or customer requirements. There are two large cut-out holes projects this year. One is a 2.0mm thick 15-inch glass with a large 8-inch through hole in the middle. The other is a 4.0mm thick 25-inch glass with a large 14-inch through hole in the middle. This time we bite the bullet and tried again.

Cutout hole

14-Inch Cutout Hole    24.4-Inch

The first attempt is still the traditional process, that is, material cutting -CNC grinding shape -CNC coarsely drilling large hole -CNC refined through hole and chamfer.

Anyone who has experience in cover glass processing knows that this traditional process does not work totally, mainly because the CNC cannot be ground. Therefore,our attempt also ended in failure.The summary is as follows:

1. When CNC roughly drilling: the glass needs to be ground too much, the spindle torque is insufficient,and the tool bears too much resistance, so the tool wears quickly with a short life, and is easy to break, which seriously affects the processing quality.
2. It takes about 28 minutes for CNC to drill a hole, which is too long.
3. Almost no qualified products.

Traditional way did not work, so we had to try something new.

Laser drilling!

Yes, that’s what we’re thinking about. The process of this trial is to cutting the material (square shape) – laser drilling a large hole -CNC grinding shape and finishing the large hole and chamfering. However, after the laser hole’s completing, we had to adjust for several times due to the poor positioning of the hole during CNC machining,and there was still a large margin for grinding the glass, and there were also a lot of scratches on the surface…Therefore, the result of the good yield rate is only 30%, which is not have the feasibility of mass production. The attempt failed again.

At this time, the engineer put forward a bold idea, that is, first grinding the shape and then laser drilling,which may solve the problem of glass hole positioning, but at the same time, we also worried that if the yield rate cannot improved,and the cost will be higher.

We just keep trying before no better solutions coming out.This time, our process is cutting material -CNC grinding shape – laser roughly drilling a large hole -CNC finishing the through hole and chamfering.

This time the result was unexpected and showed us that this scheme is feasible. The points of success are summarized as follows:

1. The glass with edging shape solves the problem of hole positioning during secondary CNC machining.
2. The laser drilling time is only 2.5 minutes.
3. The yield rate of CNC refined through holes and chamfer is over 80%.
4. It is feasible for mass production.

Now Gelivable can make 4.0mm thick glass with 14-inch big hole, which is another technical breakthrough in the drilling holes of cover glass.

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