Wheels of fortune

Bohle has said glass processors are losing £tens-of-thousands each year to poor edge quality, something that makes even less sense at a time when product is in critically short supply.

With the UK glass sector reeling from the disruption caused by Covid, plus lower product availability caused by allocation, the industry is still wasting hundreds of thousands of square metres of product each year by using the wrong or worn glass cutting wheels, Bohle said.

Dave Broxton, managing director of Bohle, said that this was counter-intuitive at a time when glass supply was under significant pressure.

“It doesn’t ever make sense to scrap tonnes of glass each year if you can avoid it but that’s exactly what a lot of glass processors are doing, simply for the price of a cutting wheel, which is inconsequential in the scheme of things,” he said.

“Using the right cutting wheel defines your edge quality. It means you’re going to lose less product in toughening and deliver far better quality to the customer. You’re going to get fewer failures once installed, fewer remakes.

“That simple cutting wheel change creates a positive cycle that that can save you glass, product and a whole host of headaches down the line.”

Bohle works with Brembana, Grenzebach, Hegla, Intermac, Macotec and Lisec to help them optimise the performance of industrial glass cutting lines.

“How clean that break is – and how stable that glass is going to be, particularly in the furnace – is defined by multiple factors including the individual characteristics of the glass, the shape of the cut, the diameter of the cutting wheel, the angle of the cut, cutting pressure, cutting speed, and the cutting fluid used,” Dave said.

“Get one of those elements wrong and you get failures in production or failure later down the line. Either way you have remakes and wastage to deal with.”

Bohle supplies an extensive range of tungsten carbide and PCD (polycrystalline diamond) cutting wheels and their holders, sold under its Silberschnitt brand.

This includes CutMaster Gold, a highly engineered tungsten carbide cutting wheel ideally suited to cutting float line and laminated glass, with a service life of eight to 10 times longer than a standard cutting wheel.