14 Facts About Float glass

Float glass is a sheet of glass made by floating molten glass on a bed of molten metal, typically tin, although lead and other various low-melting-point alloys were used in the past.

The float glass process is known as the Pilkington process, named after the British glass manufacturer Pilkington, which pioneered the technique in the 1950s at their production site in St Helens, Merseyside.

Larger sheets of Float glass were made by blowing large cylinders which were cut open and flattened, then cut into panes.

The 'cylinders' were 6 to 8 feet long and 10 to 14 inches in diameter, limiting the width that panes of Float glass could be cut, and resulting in windows divided by transoms into rectangular panels.

Float glass's system produced a continuous ribbon of flat glass by forming the ribbon between rollers.

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Glass of lower quality, drawn Float glass, was made by drawing upwards from a pool of molten Float glass a thin sheet, held at the edges by rollers.

Between 1953 and 1957, Sir Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff of the UK's Pilkington Brothers developed the first successful commercial application for forming a continuous ribbon of Float glass using a molten tin bath on which the molten Float glass flows unhindered under the influence of gravity.

The success of this process lay in the careful balance of the volume of Float glass fed onto the bath, where it was flattened by its own weight.

Full scale profitable sales of float glass were first achieved in 1960, and in the 1960s the process was licensed throughout the world, replacing previous production methods.

Float glass uses common glass-making raw materials, typically consisting of sand, soda ash, dolomite, limestone, and salt cake etc.

Molten Float glass is fed into a "tin bath", a bath of molten tin, from a delivery canal and is poured into the tin bath by a ceramic lip known as the spout lip.

The amount of Float glass allowed to pour onto the molten tin is controlled by a gate called a tweel.

The Float glass ribbon is pulled off the bath by rollers at a controlled speed.

Today, float glass is the most widely used form of glass in consumer products.