Defining your product quality
Dave Broxton, managing director of Bohle, argues that the wrong choice of cutting wheel could be costing glass processors thousands a year.
Edge quality is key in any form of glass processing; it defines your product quality but also levels wastage, particularly where you’re going on to toughening. Get it wrong, and both (and, ultimately, your bottom line) are going to suffer.
Yet I’m not convinced that all glass processors and IGU manufacturers are necessarily giving the initial cut and break out enough consideration; and they’re paying for it, even if those costs aren’t immediately tangible.
Because it’s the initial cut of the glass that defines edge quality. This includes how likely it is to fail in toughening or how much time it’s going to take to grind or arris.
An industrial glass cutting wheel has a very small individual unit price but its impact on your productivity can be far bigger. It’s completely disproportionate.
This is where Bohle can help.Our iconic Silberschnitt cutting wheel range has evolved over almost a century from simple hand-held tools to high-tech automatic cutting wheel designs. We support our customers in selecting the right cutting wheels, and the right cutting fluids for an almost limitless range of applications.
It’s about physics: the angle of the cut, the force applied, and which cutting fluid is most effective at keeping the cut open. There are a lot of different factors at play.
If this sounds complicated, it’s because it is. But it’s worth investing time in understanding and getting it right because those remakes, the product lost in the furnace, all adds up, particularly in industrial high volume processes, and those costs in most cases come back to the right or wrong choice of cutting wheel.
We can help glass processors and IGU manufacturers in selecting the right cutting wheels. This includes support and staff training.
Whatever machinery you’re running the odds are that we have worked and developed cutting wheels with that machinery manufacturer.
We work in partnership with companies including GlastonBavelloni, Bottero, Bystronic, Benteler, CMS Brembana, Grenzebach, Hegla, Intermac, Macotec and Lisec, to help them optimise performance of industrial glass cutting lines.
We’re also driving innovation. Our highly engineered tungsten carbide cutting wheel range includes CutMaster Gold. Ideally suited to cutting of float line and laminated glass, its service life is around eight to 10 times longer than a standard cutting wheel but, more importantly, it maintains a consistently high cutting quality from the first to the last cut.
CutMaster Platinum represents a further evolution of cutting wheel technology. This uses a specially developed micro-structure that forms a permanently sharp cutting edge but rather than forming a continuous cut, creates a series of microscopic ‘dots’ along the score line creating a far more precise line.
Whatever the process, the perfect cutting wheel is out there, and while savings on improved edge quality, reduced wastage, and ultimately better product are unseen until you track them, they are, however, significant.
