While not perfected, float glass was actually invented in the mid nineteenth century, around 1864

They didn't even show the really hot work, I work in a float plant in the furnace and replacing some of the blocks and burners in the furnace, it's a kind of heat you can't begin to explain. Wish I could say it came with a nice 70k a year paycheck but it doesn't. It beats doing some of the other jobs available though.

I also work in a furnace they call it hot end operator. You are rught about the heat when replacing the brick at the furnace its insane hear

What a glaring joke that was.

@@Joshua79C A little too 'transparent'?

Lets not glaze this anymore.

Let's pause to reflect on that statement. 🤔👩‍🚒

@@stanervin6108 lol! Love it!

I started working in a glass plant about six months ago. For the first few weeks the crashes freaked me out. Now I know from where to expect the crashes. If anything, it sounds like the worker is irritated and just chucking the glass into the recycle bin. But when I look, they are more like 'meh'. I think everybody who works there completely ignores that sound. It normally comes from areas where sizes are being cut from the glass, some of which are completely automated and some manual. Working in a glass plant is awesome. Safety is a big deal, as you can imagine. The panes we deal with are much much larger than the ones in this video.

@@microdesigns2000 no worry about the glass dust?

@@technosasquatchfilms I haven't seen any particles like that. The glass tends to break down to pretty large pieces, maybe the smallest about the size of a finger tip. When the bins are dumped, there is no powder or anything like that. Good question though. Next time I am by one of those, I'll take a closer look.

I've worked in glass production for nearly a decade now. I could sleep through the sound of glass breaking now :(

I think you meant to say "...he gave us a first glass, thorough tour." Hehe

Hobby Lobby carries small panes of it.

Lamination is usually done by their customers. There are a couple of methods. I'd share how we do it, but then there's that non-disclosure agreement I signed...

Really no big secret. Here is one of Cardinal's Laminating plants. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mc12dN17s9rMiqc.html

@@punknhead23 Interesting thanks

I know! I wonder how much glass that makes.

@@microdesigns2000 Hopefully more than $500,000 USD worth,...

@@RealLuckless I’m more concerned about the environmental impact. We’ve gotta find innovative ways to supply energy to manufacturing industries through renewable sources.

@@microdesigns2000 about 19,000 tons a month.

* Cavalry. ("Calvary" is where Christ was crucified.)

130 and 144 are standard widths so a 6 foot section comes out every 15 seconds or so on a 6 mil run

Martin cowell don’t be daft! That would mean admitting ‘Merica didn’t invent something.

@@gooddypm at least St Helens has some good things going for it

Martin cowell not much else at the moment, well, apart from the rugby team.

@@gooddypm are you St helener?

Martin cowell Boltonian that has been here for 39 years nearly.

Cardinal FG Menomonie, Wisconsin

I thought the same thing.I am sure they have incorporated something in their mix or the bake temp/time to keep from doing a conventional annealing process.

The process generally thought of as annealing only applies to crystalline substrata not glass which is amorphous. Thus there is no need to reheat and cool glass. Instead glass need only be cooled slowly to maximize the strength of its structure.

Annealing in glass manufacturing equivalent is called tempering and most float plants do it as well. (I work in the furnace at one)

@@quinlanz92 Yes. Tempering is the term I'm use to. Although this is slightly pedantic.

Not really, tempered glass is a phrase most are familiar with, ask a room with 100 people in it what annealing is and I bet maybe 10 of them know, and ask those ten how annealing glass impacts glass and maybe 6 will associate tempered glass as the final product of the process. Pedantic, no. Lacking any significance to the world, sure.

I was thinking the same thing. I would have thought there would have needed to be a longer cooling tunnel so not to introduce stress fractures into the glass.

You have to be careful cooling glass. It has a brittle range where temperature differences in the glass can cause it to become brittle and shatter. It's called "Thermal Shock". I can't say how they cool it, but it's probably a similar process as in art glass: throttling the oven. When I would program my kiln for my art projects, I would set ramping up and ramping down rates to make sure the glass heated and cooled at a steady rate.

3:51 the machine they show it traveling down is approx 450ft in length and will take 15 minutes to an hour to travel down depending on the thickness. It uses massive fans which duct the air onto the glass surface as well as heating elements to perfectly control the cooling of the glass. And yes the glass is very brittle and sensitive to those temperature differences. Yes it breaks and sometimes more often than others. Today we had the ribbon break 2 times and we have to clean that glass up. There are days where we may have 14 breaks or even 30 minutes of breaks which is thousands of lbs of glass on the floor that you have to shovel out and up.

Nope Mexicans stole yer jerbs!!!!!

You have never seen any episode of “How it’s made”? Every episode of that program shows factories like this.

it's only begun

And be thankful for that!

If automation was going to take our jobs away it would have happened over 40 years ago. Robots just allow us to have more cheap junk than ever before.

Cardinal Glass

lol

Funny, I thought the same thing.

She’s not talking SHE’S YELLING

@@Ryan74777 well it's noisy in a factory!

purplevideotube Electrostatic Precipitate It’s the particulates from the dust collector.

Here's a few things to keep in mind: 1. This varies by the type of glass, but usually glass gets soft (slumps and takes mold shapes) around 1200 to 1300 deg F (about 648 to 704 Deg C). Glass gets tacky (sticks to things and other bits of glass) around 1300 to 1500 deg F (around 704 to 816 deg C). Glass doesn't reach its molten state until around 2400 to 2500 deg F (about 1316 to 1371 deg C). Needless to say, even on small scales (like the art glass I worked with) this requires a lot of energy. 2. One of the "holy grail" of green tech is finding a way to use solar energy in large scale manufacturing processes like this one. Notice I said the word "finding", because we don't have that tech yet. Sure, there are plenty of electric kilns that can get that hot from electrical power, but they don't scale up well, and they weren't designed for extended use that you see here. 3. Solar has its own set of challenges: I did see a video of a "proof of concept" where a solar farm was used to heat up a cauldron, but it wasn't a "solar to electricity to heat" system. Instead, the solar farm aimed all the reflected energy to a point that heated up a heat conducting solution, and that solution was transported to the cauldron. Likely, and solution to the problem of using solar for industrial manufacturing is going to use this method over converting into and out of electricity. Which brings another problem, because plants like this one run 24-7 because restarting the line is incredibly time and money consuming with a lot of waste product until the line is started. So, they'll have to find a way to overcome the lack of sunlight on nights and stormy days. 4. You misunderstand the inefficiencies in both systems. When people talk about the inefficiencies of burning fossil fuels, it's usually in respect to running an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). ICEs tend to convert most of the energy from the burnt fuel (about 70%) into heat, with the remainder going into kinetic energy to push a piston. That heat is a waste product, since it can't be used to make kinetic energy. An electric motor is far more efficient because it creates less waste heat. HOWEVER, this plant isn't using the natural gas to push a piston for mechanical energy. It's specifically after the heat and not any other form of energy from the natural gas. In this case, the efficiency equation gets flipped because heat is no longer the waste product. I suspect you get far more heat energy from a unit of natural gas than you do from a unit of electricity. (I'd need to look that up.) And this doesn't take into account for the inefficiencies built into things like the power grid stepping up and down the voltage for transmission or the fact that Photovoltaic panels only turn about 105 to 15% of sunlight into electricity. Thus, for this factory, LNG is probably way more efficient than other methods of generating Don't get me wrong. I do want to see the day we don't need Oil for anything but as a material for resins. But the tech isn't there for all applications, and electricity isn't going to be the most efficient options.

The acreage required to do this with solar would eliminate so many trees that it would be doing more damage.

@@adamkendall997 I'm not sure why people think its an "intuitive" argument to just make up the idea that solar would take up more space. Have you seen a shale oil and gas field? Here you go: www.flickr.com/photos/ddimick/8948795874 Does that look small to you? Is solar somehow notorious for taking up a lot of space? The oil sands can go on your roof top but it won't generate electricity but solar can!

@@jackielinde7568 YT didn't show me your comment until now. The type of solar power you mention that is direct thermal storage is called a molten salt solar reactor and absolutely this could be used if the investments were made into industrial scale plants for industry. I only mentioned PV because it was a segway. Frankly we could be doing this today. The technology behind molten salt solar is solid and mature plus it can also store energy so it can run through the entire work day. The issue here is exactly the same as the issue with the lack of a dynamic grid and the lack of large scale renewable projects. You mention that solar doesn't scale well. But I am not sure what you base this on. I would tend to disagree and instead point to the fact that the US infrastructure is incredibly old. Why is it old? Because we aren't making any new investments. Coastal states could be primarily power via tidal wave and and tidal wind but such projects require public investment. Individuals or tax incentives can't make that happen. Regarding efficiency I was making an admittedly vague reference to these charts: flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/Energy_US_2012.png Yes I understand the heat is mostly recovered and used in the process and yes rejected energy only includes energy that actually wasn't useful. Take a look at how under transportation there is a massive amount of rejected energy. Whereas under industry the ratio is by far the smallest. Now lets take a look at the chart for 2018. flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/assets/images/energy/us/Energy_US_2018.png Largely the reason for this is the lack of regulation on natural gas and a lot of the reject is leaking gas not heat loss.

@OldPossum en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions

Glass is floated on tin because the surface is very smooth and the glass does not need to be polished after it hardens.

Tin is more dense than glass. The glass floats on the tin like oil on water.

Watch the video and you’ll find out

NAAAAH, DATS JUS WISCONSIN, YA HEY DERE!

Look up the manual of your device, there should be something in it about volume controls.

OH HEY DER BUD, BROUGHT A COUPLE TWO TREE BREWSKIS WITCHA HUH

Seriously not every factory or commercial space requires a hard hat.

Might be a Canadian Company . used Celsius temperature instead of Fahrenheit

@@tracycolorado Canada is even stricter.

That would only apply if a worker has to work down there continuously without a respirator.

Testing is done periodically to test the silica content in the air (friable). OSHA has limits on the amount in the air and exposure times. Judging by how clean that batch house was it isn't an issue there. I work in a batch house and can tell you from experience. They don't just do a visual inspection, they use some fancy expensive equipment to perform the testing, plus they will have operators wear a device as well to get an idea of the exposure received while performing different tasks

Reusing things is often the best (not with plastic bottles though). But that broken glass bottle can also be used as feedstock for fibre glass production. They need feedstock anyway, and they might as well use broken bottles and windows to lower their environmental impact.

She probably also watches this video and then reads your comment.. Not so gently to say that

@@Engineer9736 so does your comments...

Why would you even comment that? Comment sections need less useless hate, not more. You are the toxicity that has ruined KZfaq mate.

I thought she did a great job, very clear and concise!

Craig Benson Nothing wrong with my comments

They are making window glass, not telescopes. I don't think that really matters for it's intended application.