Manufacturing Process

Based on four fundamental stages:

Stages instructions Description
1 Melting  Material: sand (72%)| soda ash (13%)| Lime (10%) |
Dolomite (4%).
 Weighed & mixed in the correct proportions to
produce a mixture known as frit.
 Waste broken glass (cutlet) is recycled along with
frit, usually in the proportions of 80% frit and 20%
cutlet.
 Melting takes place in a regenerative tank furnace at
1500°C
 Regenerative - furnace exhaust gases give up much
of their heat to combustion air.
2 Forming  The molten glass leave the furnace at 1050°C.
 The forming process must take place in the
temperature range 650°C - 1050°C.
 Below 650°C the glass becomes too vicious to bend,
stretch or shape.
 Two main forming processes for producing flat glass
- rolled process & float process.
3 Cooling  Because of the low thermal conductivity of glass - it
does not cool uniformly:
 The surfaces cool more rapidly and shrink more
rapidly than the center.
 This produce uncontrolled strain in the glass.
 If surface is scratched - glass will disintegrate.
 Cannot withstand thermal shock.
 Liable to break in use.
 Annealing - slow cooling at controlled rata (in a
controlled atmosphere).
 To avoid excessive strain in glass.
  Annealing done in an oven (chamber) called lehr.
 Glass ribbon will pass on a slow moving conveyor
belt through the annealing lehr.

4 Finishing  Cutting
 Grinding and polishing.
 Treatment - toughening, coating.
 Packaging, stacking.

( Patterson, M., (2011). Structural Glass Facades and Enclosures, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc, Hoboken, New Jersey. )
Sheet Process
 Developed by Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company in 1920s.
 At 950°C molten glass drawn vertically as continuous ribbon by a series of
rollers in a cast iron tower.

Rolled
Process
 Molten
Glass flow
from the
furnace to
the rolling
machine
along a
canal under
carefully
controlled temperature conditions.
 Forming rollers:
 25cm in diameter
 Bottom roller - engraved with pattern
 Top rollers - smooth
 Final thickness controlled by the gap between the rollers.
 Water coled rollers extract heat from the glass to fix the pattern and to
prevent glass sticking to rollers.
Wired-Glass Process
 Similar to the rolled process
 Machine consist of two independently-driven pairs of water-cooled forming
rollers fed with a ribbon of glass via separate canals from a common melting
tank.
 1st pair of rollers formed a primary ribbon (bottom portion).
 Wire mesh is introduce before 2nd pair of rollers.
 At 2nd pair of rollers - top portion of ribbon is introduced forming the final
ribbon.
 Wire mesh is fed continuously from tolls mounted above the machine.
 The final ribbon is supported by water-cooled steel rollers into the annealing
lehr.
Float process
 Pilkington Industries (1959)
 Produce fire-finish sheet of glass with a perfect flatness.
 Eliminating the time consuming grinding and polishing operations.
 Melting process will take place in the furnace.
 Molten glass will be fed to the float bath.
 Gravity keeps the liquid tin very flat.
 Molten glass will float on molten tin and spread on the surface of molten tin
forming a flat surface.
 Heat applied above the glass surface melts out any irregularities in the glass.
 As the ribbon of glass passed through the float bath - the heat is reduced
until the glass is sufficiently hard to be fed on the annealing lehr.
 After leaving the lehr, glass will be inspected and cut automatically.