New innovation: Automatic tempering furnace bed loading and unloading system
We, the Haselsteiner GmbH, have developed an automatic tempering furnace bed loading and unloading system. Since, in most cases a glass tempering plant has a very high-power consumption and therefore causes high operating costs, an optimal use of the tempering furnace is of utmost importance. Well, in many cases a higher utilization is not easy to realize for organizational reasons. However, a higher furnace bed loading (use of furnace bed area) and a higher number of oven loadings per hour are the basic requirements to reduce the tempering costs per m² of glass.
Again and again, attempts are made to reduce power consumption. The currently available technical possibilities for better energy efficiency have largely been implemented in new tempering plants anyhow.
The best way to reduce the tempering costs per m² is to increase:
- glass density of the bed loading
- number of oven loads per hour
We have now developed an automatic tempering furnace bed loading and unloading system with automatic glass lite nesting. With our system, a tempering furnace bed can not only be loaded quicker and more continuous but also automatically unloaded again with the glass lites separated for further processing. A decisive factor of our system is that we do not touch the coated glass surface on any glass lite during the loading, nesting, unloading or separation of each glass lite.
Main features of our system:
- No manual glass handling - neither at the inlet side nor at the outlet side of the furnace
- No limitation of glass size except nothing smaller than 400 x 400 mm
- For rectangular and square glass sheets (straight line shapes on request)
- No limitation in relation to the weight of the glass
- No limitation for soft coatings or low-e glass
- We never touch the coated glass surface
- Glass panes can be rotated by +/- 90 degrees
- Highly efficient mechanical nesting on the tempering bed
- Individual glass sheet loading adjusted for best tempering quality
- Faster and continuous bed loading
- Higher furnace loading per hour, more cycles
- Our loading side and unloading side communicate with each other = "continuity"
- Better tempered glass quality through continuous loading
- Reduction of costs per m² of tempered glass due to higher plant utilization
- Potential savings in personnel
- No risk of injury to personnel
- No loading errors
- Reduced CO2 costs per m² of tempered glass
Automatic loading side: No operator is required for loading:
Automatic unloading side: No operator is required for unloading:
Sample of the “mechanical” possibilities for automatic glass sheet nesting:
What advantage comes with the fully automatic furnace bed loading and unloading:
➢ better furnace bed utilization
➢ more oven loads per hour
➢ higher margin per tempering furnace
The increase number of glass lites tempered per furnace and hour can significantly reduce the tempering costs per m² glass.