Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
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.