Manufacturing Glass

Manufacturing Glass

Manufacturing Glass:
In glass manufacturing process, the transparent hard body is created by the application of vast amounts of heat to sand or quartz. Glass is an amorphous inorganic, homogeneous transparent or translucent material which can be molded into any shape. Based on the type of glass, its raw materials are collected and different compositions are sent to the manufacturing process. Following are the raw materials for different types of glass.

A collection of Raw Materials for Glass Manufacturing Process:
Types of Glass:
Raw Materials for Glass Manufacturing Process:
Soda lime glass Chalk soda ash (Na2CO3) and clean fresh sand
Potash lime glass Chalk, potassium carbonate (K2CO3) and clean fresh sand.
Potash lead glass Litharge (lead monoxide PbO) or lead sesquioxide (Pb3 O4),
Potassium carbonate (K2CO3) or pure sand Common glass Chalk, salt cake (Na2SO4), coke, ordinary sand.
Preparation of Batch in Glass Manufacturing Process:
Batch preparation is one of the first phases of the manufacturing process of glass, which involves weighing fine ground raw materials. This process includes formers, fluxes, stabilizers and sometimes colorants according to recipe required for the final product of the glass. The fine raw materials are subsequently mixed with each other to achieve a homogenous composition and then they are transferred into the melting furnace.

Melting in the Furnace:
Melting of raw materials at high temperature to form a molten glass is the central phase in the manufacturing of glass. There are numerous ways to melt glass depending on the desired product, its end use, the prevailing commercial factors and the scale of operation.

Fabrication of Glass into Desired Forms:
Fabrication of glass techniques include cutting, grinding, laminating, and drilling.
Glass fabrication requires polishing, bending, finishing and edging in most of the cases. Precision and quality are of the utmost importance in fabrication processes.
So that Computer Numerical Control machines are used.
Annealing in Glass Manufacturing Process:
It is a process of slowly cooling hot glass objects after it was formed.
It is the process to relieve residual internal stresses introduced during manufacture.

Quality: In glass manufacturing process, quality is checked before packaging process. The final glass product is rejected if the bubble or sand grain that refuses to melt.
Nowadays inspections are done automatically to detect the defects in the glass which are not seen through the naked eye.

After all the glass manufacturing process, manufactured glass can be stored as per the required shape & size and then sent it to the retail outlet store.
Glass for packaging is made from abundant natural raw materials:
71% silica (sand)
14% sodium in the form of sodium carbonate (soda ash)
11% calcium in the form of limestone
4% other ingredients, including colorants.

Cullet is added to this mixture: Cullet is broken glass, either scrap from the manufacturing process, or from recycling centers, bottle banks or kerbside collection systems. Use of cullet not only enables discarded packing to be valorized but also saves energy and raw materials.

Note: Finally this is basic idea to manufacture glass. If you want to start it as a project compulsory you should have practical experience or a basic course. If you are able fulfill these then you can start this project.

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