From our previous post, you’ve already seen how tempering works. Tempering strengthens and makes glass safer, providing value to yourself and customers. But what are the different types of glass tempering furnaces?
The most popular furnace types include the following:
- Convection furnaces
- Bending furnaces
- Radiation glass furnaces
- Chemical furnaces
Below, we will tell you the significant differences between these different furnace types.
Glass Furnace Type One: Convection Furances
Convention furnaces are the most popular type of glass furnace on the market. Convection furnaces blow hot air onto the surface of your glass, heating it as it goes through a conveyer belt.
The hot air heats the surface and inside of the glass, causing it to be ready for the next step in the process. Cooled bursts of air create surface tension on the glass, making it sturdy as a result.
Hot air ensures that there is no physical contact with the glass, which prevents warping. None of the furnaces on this list physically contacts glass with heat, as that would probably destroy your results.
Convection ovens are typically preferred because they are the cheapest. All you need is a hot coil and a fan to blow that air through.
Continuous furnaces, a form of convection furnaces, are unique as a continuous line of glass goes through your line. For production lines, they are suitable for high volumes of glass but use the same heating type.
Glass Furnace Type Two: Bending Furnaces
Bending glass furnaces are the “kill two birds with one stone” type of furnace. Context clues will reveal what those two apply to, but here’s some clarification:
- The heating and cooling features temper the glass
- Arcs along the machine morph it into a slightly bent shape
The slightly bent shape makes this glass furnace suitable for creating auto glass. Depending on what your furnace is for, you could see glass for standard cars, buses, or even trains.
High-velocity transport requires glass that with higher resistance. Imperfections in this glass result in dangerous situations. So those who work in the automobile glass department have to be discerning and detail-oriented.
Curved glass like this can sometimes be part of custom projects. For example, limited amounts of windows could benefit from a slight curve. However, unique and custom projects like that typically require specialized equipment.
Glass Furnace Type Three: Radiation Glass Furnaces
Radiation glass furnaces offer radiant heating solutions. Radiant heating delivers heat directly from hot surfaces to the space covered.
Think of it as the heat from your at-home stove. You can feel the warmth spread across a limited space, especially at higher temperatures.
Infrared radiation is used to heat the glass to high temperatures. This heating selection is typically pretty efficient, as it is often in many modern homes.
For radiant heat to work for glass, you need to contain it. This means that the outside of your glass machinery needs to be heat-resistant against radiant heating.
By comparison, convection heating will heat the air over surfaces. Air is a lot harder to control, so convection heating is inefficient. Both are still used because they are relatively inexpensive.
Glass Furnace Type Four: Chemical Furnaces
Chemical heating furnaces are the behemoths of the glass tempering world. They have walkways to get up to, given that they are for the beefiest types of glass.
These are limited to heavy-duty projects, given that chemical heating is far more intense than standard glass ovens. The versatility of chemical furnaces also makes them suitable for bent glass, which is impossible to work with from standard heating options.
Chemical furnaces also can work with incredibly thin glass. Some are known to deal with glass that has a thickness as low as 0.3 mm. Some forms of chemical tempering cannot use heat due to their fine details.
Conclusion
Glass tempering is an easy way for you to add value to your glass products. Whether you have a flat glass production line or work in automotive glass, Glass Machinery Direct can get you connected with cost-effective machines.
