What Are the Manufacturing Issues When Producing Drinking Glasses?

When producing any kind of product, it is a must to watch out for manufacturing issues. Finding them in an early stage may save you a lot of time and money. Read below which problems we found when producing custom drinking glasses and how we encountered them in an early stage, saving us and our client a lot of time and money.

Manufacturing Issues When Producing Glasses

 

Keeping Up with Production to Prevent Manufacturing Issues

Producing unique promotional glasses often requires opening a mould, depending on the difficulty of the glass it will take a couple of weeks to produce the mould. When the mould is finished it will be cleaned and the factory can start with the production samples.

The samples we receive in our office are not the first sample from the mould. It will take the factory a couple of times to produce a good sample.

When we receive the sample, we will do our own quality check to ensure the glass meets the requirements of our clients. Often encountered problems are listed below:

 

Common Manufacturing Issues When Producing Glass Products

Problem No. 1: Lines

A line sometimes called a “striation,” is a mark that appears on the surface of the glass. It is caused by a disturbance in the glass as it cools and solidifies at the end of the forming process.

This disturbance can be caused by many things, including fluctuations in temperature or a disruption in the flow of glass through the forehearth – the area where molten glass is fed into the forming machine to create bottles or jars.

A line may also occur if there is an interruption in the power supply to an IS machine (Injection Stretch) during forming.

 

Why do lines occur?

If you’re producing glass containers on a high-speed production line, it’s inevitable – there will be times when the temperature fluctuates or your production equipment suffers from interference or disruption of some kind. This can cause lines to appear on your finished products.

When heat is applied to glass, a series of chemical changes take place. It becomes less dense, which means it expands. The chemicals in the glass also begin to melt together and bond with one another. Both of these processes cause stress within the glass itself, creating what is known as tension.

The more they cool, the more they contract, causing stress on the inside of the glass. This is called compression. When you have both of these forces working against each other, it creates tension that causes the glass to break.

In order to avoid this breakage, the glass has to be cooled slowly so that there is no extreme difference between the expansion and contraction rates of the heat-treated material. That’s why you see lines on your glasses – it’s where the cooling happened too fast or too slow and caused stress fractures on them.

 

Problem No. 2: Air Bubbles On Decal Printing

Air bubbles are often seen during the polishing process when glass products are being manufactured. They also form when glass products undergo decal printing.

Air bubbles in glass production are usually caused by improper heating or cooling of the glass mould or by using incorrect proportions of materials. When air bubbles form in an object made from glass, they can cause changes in its colour and appearance over time.

 

How to avoid this issue?

We can solve this problem of decal printing by applying higher quality decal printing which leads to a higher price. Higher quality decal sticker is better because:

• Decal sticker itself, higher quality ink printed by higher quality machine
• More skilful workers when applying the stickers
• Proper baking temperature
• Proper baking time
• Proper internal QC

 

Problem No. 3: White Dots

Another issue we have encountered when manufacturing glasses are white dots, which appear on the white part of the decal being applied. On the other hand, it is not a major issue and can be corrected easily.

 

How to avoid this issue?

To avoid this, we can only do printing on the green part and no printing on the white part. For silkscreen printing, white dots can easily be scratched by nails and cannot be put in the dishwasher.

 

Problem No. 4: Dirty Marks

Manufacturing issues when producing glasses

Manufacturing Issues When Producing Glasses

 

As shown in the pictures there are some clear red dirty marks on the bottom of the glass. Fortunately, it didn’t influence the samples and could easily be solved.

The red marks are residue from the mould, a second cleaning from the mould resolves the problem and the whole production will not be influenced by this.

Manufacturing issues when producing glasses

Manufacturing Issues When Producing Glasses

 

Reasons For Glass Price Increase

1. Limited glass production capacity

From the view of supply and demand, the likelihood of excessive supply growth is low due to the lack of the overall production capacity of glass.

Furthermore, in the case of continuous improvement in production profits in the recent period, there has not been a significant expansion of production capacity. Hence, countermeasures to prices are tough for the time being.

Due to the more high-priced value of solar glass and low iron glass, many glass manufacturers turned the production capability to produce this instead, curbing the production capability of standard architectural glass.

 

2. A large amount of glass requirement

The price increase is caused by high demand and low inventory. Glass supply and demand have moved from an apparent overabundance to a progressive tightening.

 

3. Global Inflation

Global inflation has caused numerous other products such as aluminium, steel, bronze and even glass to increase.

 

Factors that Influence Glass Price Increase

The float glass price will undoubtedly result in a massive influence on both the domestic and export market.

Many float glass exporters in Qingdao have announced that income diminished by half under the high price environment. As a result, many China glass processors started shipping glass from other countries, such as Iran and Malaysia, which are 20-30% cheaper.

The float glass price increase will destroy China’s float glass export industry and force them to turn to higher profit products. In addition, traditional glass products-float glass and laminated glass sheets will no longer have a price advantage anymore.

The shipping costs also influenced the glass export sector and induced a decline in orders from overseas. Therefore, the upcoming years will be extremely difficult for glass exporters.

 

Read More About Customising Glasses:

There are different methods when it comes to creating custom glassware, they vary on your needs and requirements. Let’s find out what is the best process when manufacturing glasses for your next promotion in this blog!

 

Having a good understanding of what factors affect the quality during manufacturing is essential. Learn more about how quality is maintained during the production process of glass products here:

 

Custom printed glassware is one of the most popular merchandise ideas, especially for drinks and beverage brands. In this article, we have listed down the top reasons why should you include them in your gift with purchase promotion.

 

If we ask what is interesting about an ordinary glass, you’ll probably answer, “nothing”. And we believe in that too. Check out this fantastic case study about how glasses are decorated in Japan, plus top ideas on how you can do it too!

 

Contact Us

Please use the link on the side if you wish to receive a quotation for a promotional item. We also recommend contacting our in-house design team Mindsparkz here for all design inquiries. Should you want to find out more about our packaging solutions, contact us here.

 

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2023-02-08T18:13:19+08:00

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