Vitrum visitors interested in flat glass processing will want to visit the
booth of Italian company Forvet S.r.l. The company will feature its Francesca FC numerical
control working center, which the company says is capable of processing flat glass without
manual adjustments or operator assistance. These features include drilling,
countersinking, milling and grinding operations, which can be performed on any glass
shape. The FC controls the glass transport and drilling speed and automatically adjusts
the drill height to compensate for drill-bit wear. But, in spite of the sophisticated
technology, programming operations are simple. With the guidance of a specially developed
and dedicated Cad-Cam program, a beginner may perform this function.
Shopping for machines used for the production of architectural or
automotive safety glass? Then you may want to visit the booth of Glassrobots Oy of
Tampere, Finland. The company’s Rainbowmaker TSF™ series offers bending and
tempering furnaces for annealed, heat-strengthened and tempered glass designed for short
series production. The system utilizes a patented module type-bending mold and
doesn’t require an expensive ceramic mold.
On the automotive side, Glassrobots will feature its fully-automatic windscreen bending
furnaces, large bending furnaces for bus and special vehicle windscreens and vacuum
de-airing and assembling conveyors for mixed production.
Italy’s Belfortglass srl will feature its new vertical IG line 2000 mm, as well as the new models of Thiokol and butyl extruders and the Turning Table 3V IG machines. A sample of the company’s diamond wheels, edging machines and double edgers, will also be on display.
A variety of new products launched in the North American market by Italy’s Profilglass will be on display at Vitrum and will include eight different sizes of powder-coated muntin bars available in a two-tone version. The company produces aluminum spacer bars and decorative profiles for insulating glass and exports its products to 60 countries.
Fratelli Pezza of Italy will exhibit its new Mistral line, which the company says broadens and improves the machinery series used for glass sandblasting. According to the company, the Mistral line is the world’s first sandblasting machine to be numerically controlled. The extreme flexibility of the work program permits varying levels of sand-blasting quality to be obtained, while always maintaining optimum uniformity throughout the finished product.
While the manufacturing of curved safety glass has been subject to some
limitations, both technical and quality-based, Tamglass of Tampere, Finland, says it has
solved these problems. The safety glass products made on the company’s new Bending
and Tempering System with Press (BTS™), are highly specialized. According to the
company, the application of proper moulds, in combination with well-controlled cooling in
the press section of the machine, are the keys to high quality and high-yield
applications.
Additionally, the company’s Horizontal Tempering Furnace (HTF ProE™) has a heat
control function which prevents the edge of the glass from overheating while offering
increased flexibility. A new convection system is designed to improve tempering of coated
and thin glass.
U.S.-based Glasstech updated two of its machinery products in time for
Vitrum ’99. The Forced Convection 2 System (FCH2) offers one new
improvement—lower cost. The FCH2 utilizes all the benefits of the original system
including increased productivity, improved optical and surface quality of the glass and
the ability to process sputter-coated super low-E glasses at clear float rates.
The company will also feature its CRB 2 System at Vitrum. According to Glasstech, the new
advanced cylindrical bender retains the outstanding changeover time of the original system
while nearly doubling its production. With the new system, a 7.5 second cycle is needed to
produce a part that is 4-mm thick and 1 m in length.
Visitors to the EFCO Ltd. booth may view the company’s 650- by 650-mm
oscillating glass tempering furnace used to toughen small instrument glasses and glass
sections. Additional offerings of the Surrey, UK-based company include custom-built
furnaces for research and small production, oscillating furnaces for batch production of
variable glass sizes and continuous furnaces for higher outputs.
USG
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