This week, we are dealing with the following two questions:

1. I am running an older furnace. Every time I change the glass thickness, I have to use a high loading delay. Is there any way to reduce or eliminate the delay?
2. I am processing a lot of 19 mm glass. It breaks in the furnace quite easily. What precautions should I take to prevent this?

For this week’s questions, see our full video response below!

I am running an older furnace. Every time I change the glass thickness, I have to use a high loading delay. Is there any way to reduce or eliminate the delay?

Most old tempering lines require that you to make specific temperature settings for different glass thicknesses. This means that you’ll unfortunately have those loading delays as you have to wait to get the correct temperature when you change the glass because of the new thickness.

In newer and more sophisticated tempering lines, the heating control is so advanced that you can actually run different thicknesses with similar temperature settings and fully eliminate the loading delays.

If you have an old furnace and cannot set the temperatures at the same level, then you should make sure that your production planning is as efficient as possible and that you produce all the same thicknesses at one time.

I am processing a lot of 19 mm glass. It breaks in the furnace quite easily. What precautions should I take to prevent this?

We have at least three tips for you. Firstly, make sure that your edge work is good – we always recommend diamond-ground edges.

Secondly, when you start to temper the glass, make sure that the inner temperature is low, about 640 ℃, and use very low convection levels at the start of the heating phase.

Thirdly, make sure that the glass you’re running is not cold. For example, you shouldn’t immediately run any glass brought in from wintery temperatures outside. We recommend letting the glass warm up to a normal room temperature before you start tempering it.

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