“With growing demands in our market, we needed to bring our older Glaston furnace up to modern standards. Thanks to the installation done over Christmas break, we were able to save time – to get up and running quickly at the start of the year,” says Sanjay Meghani, Director, at Super Sealed Units Ltd in Dunstable, UK. “Today, we are able to temper higher performance glass, achieve flatter results and utilize the full furnace bed for greater volumes.”
Super Sealed Units is the specialized double-glazed glass unit division within the Super Toughened Glass Group, a glass processing specialist in the UK with a strong reputation for fine quality and top customer service. The company focuses on all sizes of insulating glass units (IGUs) for domestic and commercial customers. The group started with IGU production in 2011, when it bought the entire business from another company, including the original Glaston ProE furnace dating from 2001.
“We had recently been facing issues when loading glass across the full bed of our furnace,” Sanjay Meghani explains. “We could not keep the heating consistent across the chamber. We needed a way to produce flatter glass and gain greater control of the heating across all areas of the bed. It was clear that we needed to bring our older furnace up to modern standards to meet growing demands,” he says.
Super Sealed Units and the entire Super Toughened Glass Group have always had Glaston furnaces and glass processing equipment. When the teams were discussing the problems they faced, the two options were either to replace the furnace with a completely new one or to upgrade the existing furnace with a Roller Heat Control (RHC) modernization. This upgrade eliminates problems caused specifically by roller heat disturbances and increases overall glass quality.
“The new furnace would have cost more. But, even more important than the money aspect, was the fact that a new furnace would require about two months of work: one month to remove the existing furnace and a second month to install the new one,” Sanjay explains.
