Glass tubing suppliers

[TheGreySpectre]

When doing borosilicate glass tubing for a hard line system, is there any particular reason to buy it from PC specific water cooling manufacturers like alphacool or mayhem? It seems like all the tubing offered by the standard water cooling manufacturers is about 3x as expensive or more as buying from a dedicated glass supplier.

 

[Brian_B]

You are correct it’s more expensive. Other than ensuring it will work with the other components no, there is no real reason

 

[VanGoghComplex]

I wouldn't think so. Glass is glass; if it were copper, brass or steel I'd be concerned, because metallurgy is important, but if you can find the correct OD for your chosen fittings, I'd say buy up.

Lemme know if you happen to see any 14mm OD tubing in your travels. Been considering glass myself, but don't want to rebuy all my fittings to make the change. XD

 

[TheGreySpectre]

I wouldn't think so. Glass is glass; if it were copper, brass or steel I'd be concerned, because metallurgy is important, but if you can find the correct OD for your chosen fittings, I'd say buy up.

Lemme know if you happen to see any 14mm OD tubing in your travels. Been considering glass myself, but don't want to rebuy all my fittings to make the change. XD

Here you go and here is a second source for 14mm. It's like $4 for 60 inches and you get to choose your ID

It's interesting to me that when switching from a PC specific vendor to a general glass vendor, glass tubing goes from being one of the more expensive forms of tubing to one of the cheapest.

Also it should be noted if you want you can get colored boro glass from glass manufacturers. It's a hair more expensive, but still significantly cheaper then PC branded tubing.

 

[DoubleTap]

How do you go about cutting glass and making sure it's not sharp so it doesn't hurt the o-rings?

That green tubing looks smart.

 

[VanGoghComplex]

How do you go about cutting glass and making sure it's not sharp so it doesn't hurt the o-rings?

That green tubing looks smart.

JayzTwoCents has a YouTube video on which he explains it; he did a glass tubing build a couple years back. It involves a special (but cheap) scoring tool and some sandpaper.

 

[TheGreySpectre]

How do you go about cutting glass and making sure it's not sharp so it doesn't hurt the o-rings?

That green tubing looks smart.

There are two ways to cut it. The first is to use a glass tube cutter. This scores the glass and then you break it at the scoring point. The second way is is to use a diamond cutting disk on a dremel, when doing this also want to use a respirator as glass dust is exceptionally bad for you. Downside of the first method is that you can't do it close to the end of a tube. Downside of the second method is that inhaling glass dust can kill you (hence the respirator)

You clean up the edges by doing something called flame polishing. Essentially you sand the end then stick it in a blow torch or bunsen burner and rotate it around a bit. Here is a video on it

 

[DoubleTap]

Hard to decide between easy looking ZMT, fun looking PETG bending and ultimate looking glass.

I'm pretty handy and don't want to sell myself short, but I don't want to overreach for my first loop either.

 

[N4CR]

Schott is probably the biggest source for this stuff, well, they invented it and they manufacture in most sizes up to 425mm diam and 1500mm lengths.
Might as well go direct to a supplier than a greedy middle man merchant.

 

[DahlKen]

It does seem to make more sense to go direct to a glass vendor. The PC place is probably getting it from the same source and just throwing on their mark-up.