Float glass or white glass?

What is Float Glass?

Glass is essential in decorating spaces, particularly in elements like doors and windows. It comes in various types, including ordinary glass, artistic glass, and tempered glass. How familiar are you with float glass?

Float glass is crafted using raw materials such as sea sand, quartz sandstone powder, soda ash, dolomite, and others. These materials are melted at high temperatures in a furnace. The molten glass then continuously flows onto a molten metal surface, where it spreads out evenly to form a polished glass ribbon with consistent thickness. After cooling and solidifying, it's separated from the molten metal, followed by annealing and cutting to produce transparent, colorless flat glass.

The production process of float glass takes place in a tin bath containing protective gas. Float glass finds extensive applications, including tinted glass, automotive windshields, various grades for deep processing, scanner-grade glass, coating-grade glass, French glass for mirrors, and more. Notably, ultra-white float glass holds significant market potential due to its versatile use in high-end construction, glass processing, solar photovoltaic installations, premium glass furniture, decorative items, imitation crystal products, lamp glass, precision electronics, and specialized construction projects.

Float Glass Fabrication

Dolomite and other minerals are melted in a glass furnace at a temperature of 1800℃. During this process, bubbles rise and impurities settle beneath the furnace. The molten glass then floats on the surface of a tin material. Due to the effects of gravity and tension, it spreads out to form flat glass with even thickness and a polished surface, free from bubbles, scratches, and waves. This high-quality glass, produced by HHG, includes clear float glass, ultra-clear float glass, and colored float glass, each suited for various applications such as doors, windows, furniture, and automotive uses. It can also undergo processes like tempering, laminating, and mirroring for architectural or optical purposes.

Advantages of Float Glass:

Float glass is manufactured in a tin bath, where the glass effortlessly floats on the surface of the molten tin. Consequently, it boasts unparalleled flatness and lacks any water ripples. This characteristic makes it ideal for producing mirrors and automobile glass that maintain their shape flawlessly, marking a significant advantage.

The quartz sand ore chosen for float glass production serves as excellent raw material. The resulting glass is exceptionally pure with excellent transparency, appearing bright and colorless. It is free from defects like glass boils and bubbles, ensuring high quality.

Float glass possesses a dense and sturdy structure, imparting a smooth texture when touched. It is heavier per square meter compared to ordinary flat glass of the same thickness, making it easier to cut and less prone to breakage.

What is ultra-white glass?

Ultra-white glass shares all the machinable characteristics of top-tier float glass while boasting superior physical, mechanical, and optical properties. It can undergo a multitude of advanced processing techniques, akin to other premium float glass options. These processes include tempering, coating, applying colored glazes, hot bending, laminating, and hollow assembly, among others.

In architecture, the use of ultra-white colored glaze offers not just energy efficiency and eco-friendliness but also enables the integration of trendy and cutting-edge architectural styles and design ideas. When ultra-white glass is combined with advanced optics and optoelectronic technology in optoelectronic curtain walls, it opens up a new and promising avenue in architectural innovation.

The difference between float glass and ultra-white glass:

wiriteme this in another words : In terms of appearance, the biggest difference between colorless float glass and ultra-clear float glass is transparency. The former is not strictly required. Usually the visible light transmittance is 89% (3mm), while the ultra-white has strict requirements. There are also strict regulations on the iron oxide content that causes the glass to color (blue, green): the visible light transmittance is not low At 91.5% (3mm), the iron oxide (Fe2O3) content is not higher than 0.015% (normal float is about 0.1%, which is 10 times higher).