Transcript
Intro:
what's going on guys we are at custom aquariums I'm really excited this is Mark he's the one that runs everything here we are going to show you guys how my giant palladarium was built and how they make their amazing aquariums hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode
Glass Cutting Process:
over here is where the whole glass cutting process starts do you want to walk us through that sure so we get the glasses in large crates uh we have all the different uh thicknesses and clarity there we pull the crates out it goes on to the rack back there from there we can grab each individual piece with the suction suction robots once we have it on the robot we bring it over to our cnc glass cutting table it's basically like a big air hockey table can allow us to position the glass once that starts the machine will actually measure the piece of glass we pre-program in all the different sizes we want cut for that particular sheet the machine will automatically nest everything lay it out and then it goes ahead and scores it once it scores it then we break the glass take it off and put it on the job cards for each individual job so this awesome machine behind me this is our polishing edging machine this is a 10 head i believe polishing machine basically when we score the glass there's a lot of micro fractures very sharp so this machine takes every edge on every panel of the tank and polishes out those scratches puts a nice bevel on it which adds strength uh just makes it a nice clean looking edge and also adds strength to the piece of glass so every single side of every panel is run through this machine it's a fairly slow process and basically it starts with a pretty coarse grinding wheel and as it continues down it gets finer and finer puts bevels on it and then polishes everything to a nice smooth polish so similar to like a car window if you have a small fracture it can grow so this machine polishes out all the fractures on the edge from the braking process all right guys this is our drill station
Drilling Process:
we have five individual drills with different size drill bits for all the variety of holes we do so these are two sided drill bits the drill will go halfway up from the bottom kick off retract and then the top drill will go and finish the hole what that does is it gives you a very nice hole if you've ever drilled holes one-sided you can get shell out or crack out on the back side the two-sided drills here eliminate that so you have a nice clean strong hole we have a variety of different setups we can take each individual panel move it to the next drill if you have different size holes on the same panel we do custom holes we have four or five main holes and then we can do custom holes as long as we have the drill bits available to us so quite a variety of different placement and sizes that we can do for you guys bottom drilled side drilled everything else i got i think it was one two three four holes in mine yeah i got four holes in mine i feel bad for her now once it's done uh we've already cut it edged it drilled our holes then it goes to the glass wash over here we use arrow water there's a bunch of brushes similar to like a car wash the brush car washes it goes through there cleans everything up gets the oils from the cutting just different uh materials or impurities off the glass after this point we be careful even touching it with our fingers because we don't want our finger oils uh getting onto it to mess with any of the bonding of the silicone so i'll run through this machine we have a very nice backlit area there here we look for imperfections scratches chips anything that would make that panel not pass our quality inspection gets thrown off to the side and we cut a new panel so very you know really looking closely at everything in this area before it goes on to the next step all right guys once everything is washed
Job Cart:
inspected it goes on to a job cart each customer's order has its own side of the job cart all the different panel layouts thickness clarity size hole placement are all in this package so our shop can reference this to make sure you're getting what you want at the end of the day we do different layouts for your top braces any holes that may be needed are indicated on this so this is basically their bible for making your tank so once we get to this point we end up taping the panels we place dots on it so that we don't have any glass on glass contact when we're setting these things and making making your shape for you um the tape is just there to give a nice clean silicone line and eliminate some of the cleanup so at this step your tank has passed all the inspections for clarity visibility scratches size thickness holes drilled everything's ready to go from this point on we're going to be hand setting your tank and applying the silicone
Setting:
all right now we're going to be setting the aquarium this is typically a two to sometimes four to five-person job every aquarium is hand set at this point everything's been verified they'll take each individual panel place it on the bottom panel and line everything up make sure everything's flush square looking right for what we need to see seam and clamp everything into its final position and after that we'll apply our silicone to get the bond for the aquarium so very delicate process making sure that you are not chipping the glass making sure everything is fitting and lining up and looking square and in shape so [Music]
Frame:
so uh i noticed my brain on my tank and some of these some of the paints you do frames with some you don't right correct yes we have a rimless option and then a fully framed option okay so this is this is the framing of the tank normal yep this would be uh your typical upper frame um it has a little lid on it too or a little flip on it to put your lids on but then we also like you said do a rim list where you would not have a top frame it still would have a bottom frame so all of our frame range is anodized marine grade anodized aluminum um you know there's a lot of issues with plastic tanks cross-bracing braking so all of our materials are an aluminum extrusion this would be a side structure and then you would have your cross braces here we are the only ones that do the anodized aluminum top frames in the industry a big factor is the breaking of the plastic another unique thing that we offer is this would be our cross brace on a normal tank but when you bolt it in these cross braces are removable so you could pull this out if you had a big piece of aquascape driftwood you can remove the sprays get that in push put the brace back on the tank then fill it with water um if you have to do any cleaning down the road um obviously you can pull it out and get access to it but nothing the simple fact that it is stronger than the plastic i wish i wish when i was building my enclosure that i knew that but somebody didn't tell me that so i had to work around that unfortunately so yeah it's one of the best frames in the industry it's going to be tougher it's going to last the lifetime of the aquarium we can very modularly cut this for all the different sizes that we do um use a corner and then obviously they get more cross bracing the bigger you get that's our framing in a nutshell anodized marine grade aluminum you're not gonna wreck it yeah right
Outro:
so this is pretty much your finished product i mean you guys built some amazing aquariums and enclosures because mine's technically not an aquarium i mean it isn't but yeah i mean these things are amazing [Music] [Music] all happened like this this is mind-blowing it really is so thank you for having me today appreciate it thank you guys for coming appreciate everything and thank you guys for allowing everybody to see what we do here you guys know as always i'll put all their stuff in the description of the video below i will see you guys in the next video make sure you guys have a wonderful day bye [Music] [Music] you
