How customised is a tempering furnace?

Depending on the industry they serve, glassworks and companies involved in the manufacture of toughened glass products have very different requirements. In some cases, these are even non-standard requirements for which not all tempering furnaces can provide the right answer.

So, is there a tempering furnace to suit all needs and all types of companies?

Glass tempering is a complex process requiring advanced technology, so the performance guaranteed by most furnaces is generally acceptable. The situation changes when certain specific qualities are required from the tempering process, such as minimising temper marks on the glass or being particularly energy efficient.

While it is true that there are furnaces that can best meet the needs of a large number of glassworks or companies, it is also true that it is unlikely that any ordinary glass tempering furnace will outperform the average in terms of results and fuel efficiency.

So how do you get a furnace that fully meets your company’s needs? Simple: choose a customised glass tempering furnace.

How to customise your glass furnace

A glass tempering furnace can last for decades if it is built with quality materials and robust, state-of-the-art technology.
So before you make an investment that will determine the quality of your work for a long time to come, you need to make sure that the partner who will build your furnace for you carries out a thorough analysis of your needs.

These include:

• The production output you want to achiev;
• Optimisation of your energy consumption;
• Overcoming any limitations related to the structure of your premises.

Once these general parameters have been established, here are some aspects of your tempering furnace that can be customised:

• Heating chamber dimensions: furnaces can be designed with different chamber sizes to accommodate glass sheets of specific sizes.
• Heating systems: Various types of heating systems can be installed, including intelligent systems that ‘fragment’ the heating chambers into many independent areas of reduced size, each with a heating element and thermocouple. Thanks to sensors placed inside and outside the oven, the oven is able to detect the areas occupied by the glass, and the percentage of the glass that is occupied, so that only those areas are heated.
• Cooling systems: These control the cooling rate of the hot glass to create the compressive stresses necessary for tempering. If the glass is not cooled properly, more iridescence is likely to occur. This also requires the furnace to have real-time monitoring systems to avoid tempering errors.
• Automation and control: In addition to the above, tempering furnaces can be equipped with advanced software to monitor and precisely control temperature, air pressure, cooling flows and glass handling to optimise the tempering process. There are also particularly intelligent and flexible software packages that allow thickness changes to be made sequentially in the trolley, eliminating waiting times – an essential feature for speeding up processes. This software also has the enormous advantage of making it much easier for non-specialist personnel to operate the furnace.
• Energy saving software: you can equip your customised glass tempering furnace with systems that make it extremely energy efficient, reducing consumption by up to 70% compared to other solutions. But be careful: this kind of performance is only guaranteed by Mazzaroppi furnaces, which are the most energy efficient on the market.

Thanks to Mazzaroppi’s proprietary technologies, it is possible to equip a customised oven with systems such as just-in-time ignition, which allows the machine to be switched off during the hours when it is not in use, and specific software to limit energy absorption peaks and keep dissipation very low.

TP Advanced, Mazzaroppi’s highly customisable oven capable of tempering any type of glass, is designed to meet the production needs of companies in a wide range of sectors, from household appliances to architecture, from bathroom furniture to the automotive industry. The system can have a minimum size of 1900mm x 4200mm and up to 3100mm x 6200mm. It can also process low-e glass up to e=0.01 and in thicknesses from 2.8mm to 19mm.

And if your requirements are exceptional?

Then you can opt for a machine designed specifically to meet your needs, for example, with the capacity to temper glass on two or three production lines, or with additional heating chambers, or even with an interchangeable heating chamber on two independent lines. With an ad hoc design, you can optimise your working time and diversify your production to the maximum.

Mazzaroppi is the only family dedicated to glass tempering for over 60 years, constantly striving to perfect and innovate its patented technologies.

This is why we are able to meet all your needs for customisation and design, creating the tempering furnace that perfectly suits your business. And guaranteeing you ultra-low consumption!

Would you like to know what you could produce, how you could produce it and how much you would consume with the hardening furnace designed especially for your work?