How to fit LED or Lights into very hard porcelain tiles with diamond holesaws or tile drills

Here at 365Drills we are sent many projects and this is the latest to land on our office desk. Its a complicated drilling pro project to drill holes and install LED lights into large tiles. Take a look at how a simple task becomes rather difficult!

Above is the LED light the customer requests us to install. The drilling width is 83mm and the outer ID is 85mm That means there is only a 2mm tolerance for this job. If we are out be even a few mm then the whole tile is ruined.

The next problem is that we only supply either an 80mm or 85mm holesaw so that complicates the issue.

We cant use the 85mm or the light will fall through. So we will have to drill out an 80mm inner ring and then grind a ridge into the tile for it to fit.

This is our drilling machine. Its different to most bench drills because the head can be adjusted forwards or backwards to increase the gap from the stand to the center of the tile. This allows us to drill large format porcelain tiles. In fact VERY large tiles!

We measure out the center of the tile and check for accuracy.

The 80mm diamond holesaw is clamped into the chuck. The LED light is in shot.

Now we start to drill the inner ring. This is the PORSADRILL 80mm diamond holesaw starting its work. You can see the external pencil marking for the LED light and the internal groove of the tile starting to form.

Things are getting hot so water is added via sponge to cool the diamond crown or holesaw and also to keep down dust off the bathroom tile.

A few minutes later and the diamond holesaw had made the cut. We raised the tile on a wooden bed to avoid drilling the metal base. It saves on your diamonds.

The tile is towel dried and you can see perfect chip free hole has been formed.. So now we are going to alter this ring to fit the LED light.

Measurements are taken from the back of the LED where the clips or lugs are located.

A smaller diamond drill is used to bevel the edges inwards so that the lugs will slip into place. If you are doing this work one consideration is to actually file off the plastic lugs and just go with the inner ring. Use adhesive to hold the LED in place. For most people its probably easier to remove the plastic lugs and fit the light into the hole that it is to ream out holes for them. But we are good at our work so its not a problem!

After drilling very carefully the lugs are eased into the circle. The LED is a perfect fit...

The hole is now beginning to look a little ragged with all the reaming out! Next the entire rim of the hole is reamed out to widen it from 80mm to 83mm the required dimensions. In this case we created a step effect taking only the top part of the tile out. You can see this more clearly in the top part of the photo. The LED Light pushes into the hole and sits on this internal rim.

This is how the finished tile looks with the LED FINISHED.

At an angle. So you can see the light is flush to the tile.

Now we remove the LED and use this tile as a template for the other four.

Laying a tile on top of the other gives an easy template to mark out.

And that pencil mark is where we are going to aim our 80mm drill at

Back in to the tile once more (to the left is the core from the 1st tile)

A tip is to use sponges to shield the crown. Look at the back sponge. This is saturated with water and put onto the tile. As the crown spins it "collects" water slowly draining the sponge. You can see the water level as a dark patch. Use the second sponge to top-up the main sponge with water and also as a shield from the inevitable spray that shoots out from the crown as it spins on the tile.

Finally all four tiles are drilled out. They look a bit odd shaped but you can be sure the LED fits snug.

And here's your finished article... One LED flush fitted to a bathroom tile.

Job done!