It seems that I have been getting quite a few messages lately asking me how the calculator works or telling me that it does not work. When I reply to those threads I have found that most of the time it's because it's apparently not intuitive enough. The calculator does work correctly except in very rare cases where the width length and height are odd variables... I'f made the calc fail before with odd numbers.. hopefully we never deal with those, and if they ever get found again they can be documented to see if there is a fix.
At any rate, I have decided to create a walk through guide to using the calculator. I hope this will help alleviate some of the confusion people have.
Glass and Acrylic Calculator
Step 1:
The calculator at it's most basic is meant to calculate the glass thickness at a safety rating of 3.8. It can calculate the thickness for other ratings, but the default is 3.8. Let's look at a picture.
In the top most section you will notice that there are 4 yellow areas. Yellow areas are open for modification, meaning that you as the user choose the data that is in those cells. In the example we have length at 48, width at 24, height at 30, and the desired safety factor at 3.8. 3.8 is the industry recommended safety factor for rimless and braceless all glass tanks. If you are building a plywood or braced tank you can use a smaller safety factor, this is however up to your discretion as I will not recommend any specific variables for individual tanks.
So, let's take the picture and look at that it tells us based on the LxWxH + SF data. The next box down is the recommendations box, this is where the calculator tells you what thickness of glass you should use for both the sides and the bottom based on the data you entered at the top. In our case it tells us that we need to use glass that is at least .66 inches or 16.74mm's thick for the sides and .88 inches or 22.32 mm's for the bottom. It also gives us information that most of us don't need, and that's the amount of deflection.you can expect from that glass. Useful for those of us that want to work out the safety factor on our own with thinner glass and bracing.
Here, is where people get confused. They know that they can play with the SF number to see what it recommends but they don't realize that the can calculate the safety factor from the glass thickness as well. I'm skipping down a few lines here, let's look at group 5 on the calc. Here you will see an area labels Reverse SF Calculator, and that's exactly what it is. This area will use the dimensions from area 1 but instead of using the safety factor from area 1 it uses the glass thickness setting from area 5 to calculate the safety factor of that glass. In the example we are using .5 inch thick glass and 12mm glass, for the .5 inch thick glass the safety factor is 2.2, for the 12mm it is 1.95. So, for instance you have a sheet of 1/4" glass and you want to make a tank that is 120 inches long and 20 inches high you can find out what the recommended safety factor is as well as the safety factor of the 1/4" glass. The Reverse SF will also calculate bottom thickness as well. *Bottom thickness calculations assume aquarium standard building practice.
The calculator will also give you the recommended acrylic thickness both supported and unsupported from the dimensions in area 1. These are not modifiable. For this calculator, they are set in stone and I will not recommend anything other than the numbers those fields spit out.
Other goodies include water weight and glass weight calculations. For people building true monsters these numbers are highly valuable.
All of these tools have been put into this one calculator to help you as a hobbyist to make educated decisions about your projects. If you have further questions or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to post here or send me a message. Since this is more than likely the final incarnation of the calculator barring unforeseen events, this will be the thread I monitor from here on out.
Thanks
At any rate, I have decided to create a walk through guide to using the calculator. I hope this will help alleviate some of the confusion people have.
Glass and Acrylic Calculator
Step 1:
The calculator at it's most basic is meant to calculate the glass thickness at a safety rating of 3.8. It can calculate the thickness for other ratings, but the default is 3.8. Let's look at a picture.
In the top most section you will notice that there are 4 yellow areas. Yellow areas are open for modification, meaning that you as the user choose the data that is in those cells. In the example we have length at 48, width at 24, height at 30, and the desired safety factor at 3.8. 3.8 is the industry recommended safety factor for rimless and braceless all glass tanks. If you are building a plywood or braced tank you can use a smaller safety factor, this is however up to your discretion as I will not recommend any specific variables for individual tanks.
So, let's take the picture and look at that it tells us based on the LxWxH + SF data. The next box down is the recommendations box, this is where the calculator tells you what thickness of glass you should use for both the sides and the bottom based on the data you entered at the top. In our case it tells us that we need to use glass that is at least .66 inches or 16.74mm's thick for the sides and .88 inches or 22.32 mm's for the bottom. It also gives us information that most of us don't need, and that's the amount of deflection.you can expect from that glass. Useful for those of us that want to work out the safety factor on our own with thinner glass and bracing.
Here, is where people get confused. They know that they can play with the SF number to see what it recommends but they don't realize that the can calculate the safety factor from the glass thickness as well. I'm skipping down a few lines here, let's look at group 5 on the calc. Here you will see an area labels Reverse SF Calculator, and that's exactly what it is. This area will use the dimensions from area 1 but instead of using the safety factor from area 1 it uses the glass thickness setting from area 5 to calculate the safety factor of that glass. In the example we are using .5 inch thick glass and 12mm glass, for the .5 inch thick glass the safety factor is 2.2, for the 12mm it is 1.95. So, for instance you have a sheet of 1/4" glass and you want to make a tank that is 120 inches long and 20 inches high you can find out what the recommended safety factor is as well as the safety factor of the 1/4" glass. The Reverse SF will also calculate bottom thickness as well. *Bottom thickness calculations assume aquarium standard building practice.
The calculator will also give you the recommended acrylic thickness both supported and unsupported from the dimensions in area 1. These are not modifiable. For this calculator, they are set in stone and I will not recommend anything other than the numbers those fields spit out.
Other goodies include water weight and glass weight calculations. For people building true monsters these numbers are highly valuable.
All of these tools have been put into this one calculator to help you as a hobbyist to make educated decisions about your projects. If you have further questions or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to post here or send me a message. Since this is more than likely the final incarnation of the calculator barring unforeseen events, this will be the thread I monitor from here on out.
Thanks
