Hello everyone good morning for everyone and it’s a pleasure to be with you today.

My name is Ariel Somoza and I am a mechanical engineering student.

In this Presentation , I would like to explain how the float glass is made

Firs of all the

Float glass was invented in 1959. It did not evolve from previous technology but was
all new technology.

Capable of being operated between 1000-7000 tonnes/week depending on design

and commercial needs.Can produce glass between 25 to below 1mm in widths up to
4.6 metres wide. A float line consists of 5 main sections

1. Raw materials handling and batch plant

2. Melting furnace
3. Float bath
4. Annealing lehr
5. Cutting plant/warehouse.

BATCH

Sand, soda ash, limestone, dolomite, saltcake and carbon are the principal
ingredients used in float Glass manufacture, supplied to a strict specification of
particle size and purity.

Raw materials for immediate use are stored in silos within the batch plant and
additional ground stocks can be held.

The batch is fed to the furnace together with cullet (broken glass), a preset weighed
amount of cullet being blended with the batch whilst being delivered to the furnace.

The mixture of raw materials and cullet is continually fed onto the furnace through a
filling machine at a controlled rate to keep the glass level in the furnace constant.

Furnace

The furnaces are of the cross fired regenerative type fired by either gas or oil or a
combination and reverse every 20 minutes to take advantage of preheating the
incoming air.
The furnace can be divided into 5 parts, the filling pocket or dog house, melt area,
refiner, waist and conditioner.

The filling pocket is the point at which the batch enters the furnace and the fired
area is where the main melting takes place. The melt area of a furnace is defined as
the area from the front wall to half a breast wall past the last port.

The refiner allows the bubble formed in the melting process to escape or be
redissolved in the glass.

the conditioner allows time to cool the glass to the correct temperature for the float
bath. Furnace temperatures range from 1500º C through to 1600º C in the melt area
falling to 1400º C at the waist before reducing to 1100º C at the canal.

Float bath

In the float glass we give the shape to the glass ribbon by taking the molten glass
form its natural thickness at 1100°c, and mechanically forcing it to reach a range of
thickness from 2 mm to 12 mm, This procces takes place in a temperature range
from 1100°c to 620°c

The molten glass literally floats on the molten metal due to it low density in
comparision whit the tin. Like the watter and oil effect.

The molten glass forms a flat ribbon on the tin surface and is pulled from the bath by
the traction of the lehr and lift out rollers. This has the effect of thinning and
narrowing the ribbon.

Anealing lehr

To achieve the required stress levels and minimise breakage the ribbon of glass
supported on the roller bed is enclosed by a lehr of steel and/or refractory
construction which radiantly cools and anneals the glass. After the glass is annealed
it is control cooled at an increased rate finally being force-cooled to achieve the
necessary temperature for the warehouse operations. It is important to control the
temperature down the lehr and both the top to bottom and edge to centre
temperatures in order to control both the temporary and permanent stresses set up
in the process.

there are various segments. In each of these segments the method in which we cool
is different.

The A zone the way the air is provided a cold air, it´s a coherent form we can cool
the glass very fast.
The B zone is divided in to B1,B2,B3(zone). The reasosn for that its because in these
zone the glass has a temperature of 480°c where the glass is elastic which means we
can not introduce any stress to the glass permanently

The C zone again a cold air mass quantity is being passed to have a very little bit of
fast rate if cooling

The D zone is a preheated air, but direct and cooling with passing of the air in
contact with the glass. Not trough it

Cutting line

at a temperature of 70 degree when the glass is cut into different dimensions and
then its stacked and packed and dispatched to the customers place.