Cold End

Cutting and stacking of quality controlled glass ready for customer delivery.

Cold end manual inspection quality control booth
To ensure the glass ribbon continues to flow, the ribbon is visually inspected for quality control, with faults cut out, or the mainline breaker engaged. Removed glass 'cullet' is retired by conveyors to the furnace to be recycled.

Washing machine - cleaning, cooling and modifying glass
Glass enters the washing machine at 70°C for three key purposes

• Clean the glass to remove layer of sulphate applied to protect glass from roller marks. 
• Cool the glass to less than 50°C making it suitable for final packing of cut sheets.
• Modify the strain in the glass to make it easier to cut.

 Online scanning and strain viewer
Checks to ensure the lehr and washing machine have successfully cooled the glass for easy cutting and inspection of the ribbon for any faults.

Longitudinal and cross cutters
The ribbon is now ready to cut. It passes under the longitudinal and cross cutters splitting the ribbon into various sheet widths.

Rough edge removal
The 'selvedge removal booth' is where pneumatic wheels are guided onto the ribbon applying downward pressure to snap off the rough edges created by rollers in the tin bath.

Centre splitter
Glass enters the centre splitter which separates the ribbon into various sizes. The vision system is an additional quality control step checking for faults in the cut sheets.

Chip blower
The 'chip blower' removes any glass cullet fragments that have remained during the cutting process. Lucite coating is added to ensure stacked glass does not get marked. 

Post processing and floatliner customer deliveries
Finished sheets are sent in various directions to be loaded onto storage devices ready for further processing or by 'Jumbo Stackers' onto specialised 'Floatliner' glass transport vehicles ready for deliveries direct to customers.