Libbey Glass, US manufacturer of machine made tableware, experienced serious quality problems after having a furnace rebuild in 1999. On several occasions, the magnitude of which was great enough to cause total production loss. As a result, Jenike & Johanson Inc. were contacted to evaluate the problem & recommend a course of action. After two engineers visited the site, a sample of Libbey's batch was sent for testing so that the flow properties of the batch could be measured. These measurements, along with a review of the existing equipment drawings, confirmed that the geometry of the batch bin was contributing to the quality problems experienced in Libbey's finished products. The measurements also provided information needed as a design basis for recommending a solution. This article explains how these quality problems were resolved.
