D A Oldfield Ltd is a company that specialises in ware handling equipment and development. The company has worked for many years with glass bottle production companies globally, from large slow ware to unstable delicate ware and from average speed runs to high speed light weight runs. The importance of insulation materials between glass and metal has long been recognised as key to decreasing bottle rejection through thermal shock or contact marks. Before the 1970s, the glass industry successfully used asbestos as an insulating material, however, a ban on asbestos resulted in many attempts, with limited success, to use alternative materials which could withstand the high temperature of glass production without causing faults. In this article, the author puts forward a case for using stainless steel insulation materials in glass production lines, from the machine wipe out to the stacker push bar loading the lehr.
